Move to Exch 2007 from Exch 2003

[koopie]

Hi, I am looking for advice on a simple migration from exch2003 to exch2007. Our setup is:- K-12 school with all staff & students with mailboxes(1800 in total). Currently have 1x back end mailbox server with 3 mailbox databases (1xstaff,1xstudents & 1xsupport staff). Most teaching staff & students from year 7 upwards have notebooks & use PST's on the local drives. Balance of staff & students have mailboxes on server. We have 1x front end server in our DMZ and it provides OWA access to mailboxes from outside the school.
I would like to plan a move to exch 2007 and have as simple a config as is possible. How would you advise we set this all up. We are running all our servers as VM's under Vmware esx currently & would like to keep it all that way. Data is stored on an EMC san at present & will also remaion that way.
Trying to find some documentation that gives us simple guidlines to do this has been difficult. We love the KISS principal.
Look forward to your thoughts & advice.

 

[58sniper]

So you're asking us to design your solution?

Exchange 2007 isn't supported in VMWare. And won't be. Of course, neither is Exchange 2003.

Front End servers don't go in the DMZ.

.pst files don't belong in an Exchange environment.

What have you read about 2007? What have you tested in a lab?

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference

 

[Zelandakh]

Thoughts: Try doing some of the work yourself. This is an "intelligent work forum" not a free consultancy service. As Pat says, what have you tried?

 

[NJForensics]

Unfortunately, your desired answer is not so simple. Although I currently do have a several clients running Exchange 2007 on VMWare ESX, it will not be largely supported as 58sniper says. Exchange 2003 to 2007 has a multitude of considerations to take into effect. You are not going to find a single document that encompassess all of your needs. I would highly suggest reading several books and building a test environment as 58sniper has said. You will really hose your Exchange environment if you do not fully understand all of the intracacies of such a migration.

Chris Clancy, EnCE CCE
MCTS: Exchange 2007

http://www.milestechnologies.com

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