Splitting Up Mailboxes on multiple servers 1

[sfortner]

I have an old Exchange 5.5 email server that has 100 or so mailboxes on it. I just set up a new machine with Exchange 5.5. I want to move the mailboxes over slowly, one at a time, with both servers being in production. How can I set up routing from one server to the other for my domain name such that the first server will check to see if the mailbox is local, deliver if it is, forward to 2nd server if it is not? Thanks.

 

[Griffyn]

If the two Exchange Servers are within the same site, you don't need to do anything. Exchange will automatically route mail to the correct server within the site. Even the user's don't need to do anything - If a user had their mailbox on ServerA, and you move it to ServerB, their Outlook client will automatically reconfigure itself to ServerB.

 

[sfortner]

Thanks. As far as having the two servers be in the same site, do they have to be linked some way? Can I do this with the standard edition, or do I have to have Enterprise edition?

 

[zbnet]

Griffyn is right (a star to you for this). One exception to Outlook clients 'automagically' realigning their profiles are POP3 clients, which need manually editing to point to the new server, so watch out for those.

You 'link' servers together when they join the site. In the Exchange install, you say Join an existing site, and specify the name of an existing server in the site (known as a Reference server). The joining server then reads the Directory off this server.

Intra-site directory replication between servers in the same site is achieved via RPC (hence the requirements for good bandwidth between them) and non-configurable - it just happens.

 

[zbnet]

I forgot to add - multi-server sites are possible whatever version of Exchange you have.