What is the best way to upgrade?

[JayIT]

What is the best way to upgrade?

We will upgrade our exchange 5.5 to 2000. The new exchange will also be on a new box.

Is it better to install 5.5 on the new box, migrate the mailboxes from the old 5.5 server to the new one and then upgrade the new 5.5 to 2000

Or

Install exchange 2000 on the new box and then migrate mailboxes and data from the old exchange to the new one?

Thanks

 

[Xybertron]

Install exchange 2000 on the new box and then migrate mailboxes and data from the old exchange to the new one!

You can remove Antivirus and Internet Mail Connector and usually do an In-Place upgrade and have it work ok. At least thats what our setup team says. Dan
Microsoft Exchange Support @ Microsoft

 

[Albion]

Is there a white paper or HowTo on this? I have a small Exchange 5.5sp3 server running on a PII 233 NT 4.0 Machine. I want to move the whole thing to my new server running Win2000 with ADC.

-al

 

[brontosaurus]

There's some downloadable docs here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/itsolutions/guide/default.asp

 

[jbowlby]

I can say that I've had more sucess with using the EXMERGE utility that copies the users mailbox information out to PST's, then can dump the information back in the new server.

I've used it with several clients, nothing with more than one exchange server per site, and less than 100 users.

Exchange 2000 comes with the Utility. Exchange 5.5 doesn't, you would need to either get in from the back office 4.5 resource kit OR find it online, as I have not been able to find it on Microsoft's website.

 

[LJMoore]

We are planning to upgrade our present NT4 Exchange 5.5 SP3 box to Windows 2000 server and also upgrade Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000. Should we upgrade the box to W2K server first and then upgrade Exchange server to Exchange 2000? OR Should we upgrade the Exchange server to Exchange 2000 and then upgrade the Exchange box to Windows 2000?

Thank you,
LJMoore