Removing first Exchange Server From org 1

[stevedeb]

Hi All,

I am in the process of moving to 2003 and decommisioning our original 2000 Exchange server. I have followed The KB articles on rehoming public folders and system folders and all is well.

I have moved most mailboxes to the new server but have a question about some of the remaining boxes.

Do I need to move the System Attendant, System mailbox, and SMTP mailbox?

It looks like every store or storage group has these (some more than 1 of each). Does that mean they are specific to the Exchange server and do not need to be moved?

I do not want to shut off the old server with remaining compnents and run the risk of breaking somehting.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[efector]

The easiest thing to do, to make sure you have EVERYTHING moved that you are supposed to(and this is good to do once you are SURE that all is well), is to just shut off the Ex2K server. Make sure though, that you dont do this during production time. I would recommend leaving the first server off for about a week, to make sure that you didnt forget anything, and then remove it from the org. Generally these mailboxes are local to the server, but sometimes, you have mailboxes that are hidden. Example: you have a email address in your domain of say 'spam@domain.com', but you dont see the mailbox in ESM. The mailbox will only show up if it has received email. The mailbox is valid and 'exists', but isnt shown until it receives mail.

give this a shot and good luck.

 

[stevedeb]

I did not know that mailboxes could be hidden by not receiving mail. That deserves a star.

I have been planning on keeping the server shut off before removing it from the org. my fear is coming accross somehting later that pops up as a problem that I didn;t know about.

Thanks for the hidden box tip.

Steve

 

[efector]

the boxes arent 'hidden' per se. the issue is that if a mailbox hasnt received mail...it wont show in the ESM. For example, say you were to EXMERGE all of your mailboxes out and wanted to start from scratch. You recreated the mailboxes and wanted to EXMERGE the data back in. Well, you wouldnt be able to(and i learned this from experience), until you basically sent all the mailboxes a piece of junk mail, to make the mailbox 'visible', THEN you would be able to EXMERGE away. I kept getting an error that I couldnt remove the server..blah blah blah...because mailboxes still existed..and yet, i couldnt see them. The answer was that because they hadnt received any mail, they existed, but werent visible.

 

[DanMIS]

If you use Exchange Instant Messaging, it isn't supported by Exchange 2003. I missed that when we migrated and had to back pedal to implement Live Communication Server.

Dan