slow Transition 03 to exch2010 1

[techseek]

Hello all
small network 30 users. two 08 dc's and exch 03 (member)server.
I'd like to be able to test mailbox moves and mail routing prior to doing the actual users.
1)If I install exch10(on 08R2) and specify legacy url etc but don't make changes to my MX records (Postini), will my exch 03 continue to work as if nothing happened or, does the fact that you specify legacy url during install, force you to make the mx record changes in order to get mail and send mail?
2)What are the most likely problems I can expect to encounter with mailbox moves?
and, is it easy to "roll back" a failed Mailbox move

I will be doing the moves slowly over a period of weeks since I will only be working on fridays after everyone goes home and some mailboxes are 5-6 gigs and I expect will take some time to move.

thanks for any input /guidance

 

[ShackDaddy]

You will see the old mailboxes in the Exchange 2010 console once you install Exchange 2010. When you move a mailbox from the old to the new, it creates the mailbox object in the mailbox on the new server. Another way to think about it is that the user and the mailbox actually live in the AD, and the mailbox keeps its data on one server or another. You are just telling AD to store the data on the new server instead of the old one.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[techseek]

Awesome. you should write a book.
Is there some import mechanism for the pst's?

 

[58sniper]

Giving ShackDaddy a purple star for all of the effort put into this thread.

Do you have your Tek-Tips.com Swag? I've got mine!

Stop by the new Tek-Tips group at LinkedIn.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Yes, once you are on Exchange 2010, you will use the new-mailboximportrequest PowerShell cmdlet to import .pst files into the appropriate mailboxes. So it would be a good idea to start consolidating all .pst files into a folder (or folders) on your server for future import.

On the book subject, you can see what I'm working on at

http://www.thirdtier.net/blog.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[techseek]

Hello
We were wondering if this would work to minimize the time of mailbox moves.
First we would archive the bulk of the 03 user's MB's (the pst's would reside on our file server in respective user dirs). Then we would do moves on the reduced size MB's.
Our thinking is that in the archive pst's would just be "pointed" to from Outlook and so they would not add to data moving time???

I may be wrong in my thinking - can someone clarify

Thanks

 

[ShackDaddy]

Honestly, compared to other companys of the same size, you don't have that much data. What's your total mailbox database size (add the .edb to the .stm for total size). Is it about 74gb? Don't mess with .pst files. Just move the mailboxes over. The complete move might take 12-15 hours, but on a weekend, that's not a big deal. Move all the small mailboxes during the day on Saturday, and each one will be offline for between 10-50 minutes. Then let the big ones move overnight and into Sunday morning. One of the main reasons to migrate is so that you never have to deal with .pst files again, so you don't want to start things off by making them a critical part of your infrastructure.

Once you are on the new server you can start thinking about archives: Exchange 2010 has a nice archive mailbox feature that you can use to reduce the size of the main mailbox while still allowing access to that mail via Outlook *AND* Outlook Web Access.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[techseek]

Hello
I hope this is a thread that can continue for a bit longer.
I have met with 3 different consultants toget quotes for this project.
One told me that the way to go is to export the mailboxes to PST's and then bring them in to Exch2010. He said the mailbox move (Wizard) is error prone and I should not mess with that.
first time I heard or read that. What's your experience?
Thanks for your great help here

 

[58sniper]

First, I would NEVER recommend putting .pst files on network shares. Microsoft has said over and over not to do that.

Second, putting mail in .pst files removes access to that mail from OWA and mobile devices. There are all kinds of complications that arise from mail in .pst files.

Do you have your Tek-Tips.com Swag? I've got mine!

Stop by the new Tek-Tips group at LinkedIn.

 

[ShackDaddy]

That guy's opinion of the "move mailbox" process being to error prone to use shows that he lacks real Exchange expertise, since most move-mailbox issues are fairly easy to resolve. I would never do it via .pst.

Ask the same guy how he usually handles LegacyExchangeDN mismatch issues....

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[ntinlin]

Only problems you tend to get with the Mailbox Move Wizard are corrupted items.
You might want to set the 'Skip the corrupted messages' count to 5 or more. That might save you some redoing of moves.
Mailbox move time can also be more a function of item count than actual mailbox size. A small 1GB mailbox with 100,000 items will take a lot longer to move than a 2GB mailbox with 10,000 items.

As Dave and 58sniper says using PST's for the migration are a VERY bad idea for the reasons they state PLUS the fact it will turn all meetings into appointments.

One thing I didn't see mentioned above (I might have missed it) is that you will lose Single Instance Storage when going from EX2003 to EX2010. So your database size is not necessarily a good guide to how big the database will end up on the EX2010 side.
You might be better to simply total the sizes of your mailboxes and add about 20% for internal database overheads PLUS about 5% for search indexes. You can ignore the dumpster sizes since they won't get carried across in a migration.

One other small tip is to make sure that your users purge their Deleted Items folder before the move, this can save a lot of move time. Assuming they don't use that folder as their 'Well I might just need it at some point but I don't want it in my Inbox' holding area like my users used to do.

Neill