Removing last Exchange 5.5 server from Exchange 2003 Org.

[Atch007]

Removing the last Exchange 5.5 server from my Exchange 2003 organization. I'm going through Exchange 5.5 Administrator, connected to the Exchange 2003 box, then selecting the 5.5 server and deleting. Upon confirmation of deletion, I get a warning message stating there are still 197 mailboxes and gateways on the Exchange 5.5 server.
The server I'm removing has been offline and powered down for over 3 weeks. ALL mailboxes, public folders, and system folders were migrated to the Exchange 2003 box. I'm worried something is tied to my users mailboxes on that old server and will delete public folders and mailboxes if I confirm and delete this server. Anybody seen anything similar?
Thanks.

Brad

 

[pdtit]

Brad,

A lot depends on how you moved the mailboxes to EX2003.

As you may know, in EX55 one user could have many mailboxes; in AD/EX2003 the rule is one user/one mailbox.

That is something you can check to start with, if there are no more mailboxes without a useraccount linked to them.

Another thing you can check are the hidden recipients from 55. Maybe you moved all "visible" mailboxes without taking into account the invisible ones. Use view option in EX55 menu to select hidden recipients.

Last thing which can be tricky are your system and public folders; it is surely needed to create replica's of all public folders and subfolders and the system folders as well (Offline Address book, Schedule Free/Busy and OAB2 are the most important ones).
During the first migration phase, you normally created just replicas between EX55 and EX2003.
In this step, you should specify the EX2003 as "HOME SERVER" for each public folder; this can be done using the EX55 administrator console / each public folder / properties
After changing this (no more public folder exists on EX55 then) try to delete the EX55 server again.

Don't hesitate to reply your remarks; I know this is a tricky part in the migration process so please be carefull.

Regards, Peter

 

[Atch007]

As far as hidden recipients...I've either deleted or moved those as well. There is literally NOTHING in the recipients container on the 5.5 server - no mailboxes, no dist. groups, nothing hidden.
As for Public Folders, I followed what seems to be standard practice. I initially added the 2003 server as one of the replicas. Once ALL public folders had replicated and synchronized, I removed the 5.5 replica so that the folders only had a replica on the 2003 box.
System folders - did the same thing.

For some reason I feel there's some attribute somewhere that on user mailboxes, etc, that has ties back to the old 5.5 box though. As THE admin, I'd hate to kill the company's mailboxes when I delete the "old server".

 

[Atch007]

Resubmit...anyone else seen an issue like this?