How bad is an SBS 2003 > 2007 migration?

dynamik

Especially if you have no Exchange experience

This is a project that's going to fall in my lap shortly, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to pass it off. I'm going to push it back as far as I can, but I doubt I'll be able to get more than 2-3 weeks.

I've found some guides via Google and things like that. I was just curious if anyone had any additional pointers.

TIA

Oh, and if anyone wants to remain on-call the day of the migration, you'd be more than welcome

royal

Ask in the SBS newsgroups for any links people can provide and if anybody has done a step by step. You're by far going to get a lot more responses than here for that. I for one, have never touched SBS and I doubt I'll ever touch it (I hope).

NetAdmin2436

I'm not familiar with 2007 but I would think it should be fairly straight forward. I did a SBS 2000 --> SBS 2003 migration back in the day. For the most part it was pretty easy, nothing you can't handle .

So do you not currently have exchange installed on 2003? If not, that's OK. You install exchange separately anyways. I'd recommend you wait until after the migration to install exchange.

I'd plan on doing it over the weekend, because there will be downtime. If you really want let me know what day....I'm not that far away and could try to help ya out, I got your back.

astorrs

just follow the migration guide from Microsoft, and don't fight the wizards (use them even if you know another way to do something).

dynamik

Exchange on SBS is that different from the full 2003 version, eh? I haven't used either. I found a good tutorial on msexchange.org; I was just curious if anyone had any additional advice.

They're currently using the SBS version of Exchange with SBS 2003. I have another machine that I'll be installing Server 2008 on, along with Exchange 2007. I'm not sure why they didn't go with SBS 2008, but they already have the licenses for all this, so that's the route we're going to take. I wasn't involved with them before this.

Is it feasible to get acclimated to 2007 in a couple of weeks for this level of work? It's just a single site with around 20 users.

Thanks everyone. And thanks for the offer NetAdmin; I'll see how it goes and let you know.

I'll definitely be doing this over a weekend. I should be able to struggle through it in 48 hours.

undomiel

dynamik wrote: »

They're currently using the SBS version of Exchange with SBS 2003. I have another machine that I'll be installing Server 2008 on, along with Exchange 2007. I'm not sure why they didn't go with SBS 2008, but they already have the licenses for all this, so that's the route we're going to take. I wasn't involved with them before this.

Is it feasible to get acclimated to 2007 in a couple of weeks for this level of work? It's just a single site with around 20 users.

It shouldn't be a problem for you. Everything I've read about migrating Exchange does not look extremely difficult. Though I was told the other day that since I don't have a few years of experience in migrating Exchange that I am not worthy of employ. Do a test migration in your lab and see how it goes.

I can see the benefit of migrating off SBS as that will give them some more flexibility in their network. Though with a single site and 20 users I don't see why they would need it quite yet but that's ok, not my call.

NetAdmin2436

Oh, I misread your title initially. You are migrating to a full blown 2007, Sweet. Did you get a transition pack? In the past you've always needed a transition pack to get out of SBS mode. I *think* it's still the same when going to 2007.

This is what I used for my SBS 2003 to 2003 standard migration. It's for 2003, but much applies to 2007 and I think Simon Butler (Exchange MVP) is working on a 2007 migration version.
Exchange - Migrating to a New Exchange 2000/2003 Server - Swing Migration | Amset.info

So you DO have exchange currently installed? Then I take back the weekend thing, you should plan for this migration to take a few weeks. A clean exchange migration should take weeks, not days. However, the actual server downtime will only be a few hours. Do not rush exchange, as it's rather quirky and replication takes a long time. In the article above, they also stress to not rush it. Otherwise errors will later surface.

dynamik

I'm going to try to p2v their existing server and then perform tests with that.

I asked to have until at least the 7th, but he wasn't sure he could swing that, so I might have to go in on the 31st

Thanks again for the info and links; I'll check those out.

astorrs

Yikes, I hope they bought a transition pack or they got robbed.

dynamik

No clue. I just got a call this morning to help with this. Is that just for licensing, or is it something I actually need to pull this off?

astorrs

dynamik wrote: »

No clue. I just got a call this morning to help with this. Is that just for licensing, or is it something I actually need to pull this off?

Just for licensing. I also misunderstood initially and thought you were doing an SBS 2003 -> SBS 2008 migration.

There are a bunch of good posts on Google Groups related to exactly what you are trying to accomplish.

NetAdmin2436

It's not clear what they want.
Are they planning on keeping the 2003 SBS around after you move exchange? If that's the case, then you don't need a transition pack. You just keep the SBS on the network holding the 5 FSMO roles. The other 2008 server can just be a member server running exchange.

If they plan on removing SBS from the network and just having the 2008 server, then you will need a transition pack before you can do that. (unless microsoft has come out with a new upgrade path to 2008....I heard talk about it before but don't know if they actually made it)

dynamik

I'm planning on leaving it as a member server unless they give me a compelling reason to do otherwise. It's still their file server and whatever else they're using it for, and I don't think this Exchange box has enough resources (particularly disks) to take over everything. I'll look into the transition pack if they ever want to ditch that server and add a second 2008 machine.

Thanks again everyone.

HeroPsycho

dynamik wrote: »

Exchange on SBS is that different from the full 2003 version, eh? I haven't used either. I found a good tutorial on msexchange.org; I was just curious if anyone had any additional advice.

They're currently using the SBS version of Exchange with SBS 2003. I have another machine that I'll be installing Server 2008 on, along with Exchange 2007. I'm not sure why they didn't go with SBS 2008, but they already have the licenses for all this, so that's the route we're going to take. I wasn't involved with them before this.

Is it feasible to get acclimated to 2007 in a couple of weeks for this level of work? It's just a single site with around 20 users.

Thanks everyone. And thanks for the offer NetAdmin; I'll see how it goes and let you know.

I'll definitely be doing this over a weekend. I should be able to struggle through it in 48 hours.

Couple things I'd do...

A. Use VMware Converter and do the migration in a lab first.
B. Make sure you validate as much as possible everything is working before you pull the trigger.
C. Back everything up before you do it.

I haven't done an SBS2003 to E2K7 migration, but I would assume you'd be able to treat it as an in forest migration. Prep the domain, stand up your separate DC and email server, transfer FSMO roles, move mailboxes, decomm your SBS server in a very quick nutshell.

Couple of gotchas to be aware of:

You have 30 days once the FSMO roles have been transferred to get everything off the SBS2003 server, memory serves me right. Double check that, I might be wrong.
Don't forget to reconfig the firewalls to forward relevant mail app ports to E2K7 server when you're done.
Make sure you fully understand what cert you're gonna go with for the E2K7 box. I would recommend a SAN, aka UCC cert even though it's more money to save yourself headaches. Make sure you know all the names you need for it before you apply for the SSL cert.

Hope this helps!

blargoe

astorrs wrote: »

don't fight the wizards (use them even if you know another way to do something).

The key to everything SBS.

astorrs

Not sure if you got this or not dynamik.

You cannot run an SBS server as anything but a DC (and like HeroPsycho said, it wants to own all the FSMO roles).

The reason for the transition pack is because it saves you thousands of dollars in CAL licensing.

You can add the new server as a member server and transfer Exchange onto it within the same domain, but if you want to make it the only DC your only choice will be to buy another Windows Server 2008 license and reinstall it onto the SBS server once the new server is up and running.

dynamik

astorrs wrote: »

You can add the new server as a member server and transfer Exchange onto it within the same domain

That's the plan. Thanks again

The pressing issue is activesync for their new iPhones, but HP informed me that was added in SP2 of 2003. I can probably buy myself some more if I can get that setup quickly.

NetAdmin2436

dynamik wrote: »

That's the plan. Thanks again

The pressing issue is activesync for their new iPhones, but HP informed me that was added in SP2 of 2003. I can probably buy myself some more if I can get that setup quickly.

Yeah, you don't need exchange 2007 to do that. Exchange 2003 with the latest SP and iphones with the latest software work just fine. I have a few on my network and am using active sync.

Up until maybe a year ago (or so), iphones didn't support active sync and you had to resort to using imap.... but the newer iphone software supports active sync. So I think it was more of an apple issue, then a exchange issue.

EDIT: I sincerely hope they didn't buy exchange 2007 and a new 2008 server just because of that "issue". Maybe it's best not to tell the owner of that company then, since he'll likely scream REALLY loud. Maybe tell him after everything is set up as your walking out the door.

Slowhand

I'd like to have a moment of silence for dynamik's sanity.

Read up all you can, follow the step-by-step guides, and pray. That's all I can tell you, having spent the better part of 2007 working exclusively with SBS boxes on various networks. There will be blood, oh yes. . .

HeroPsycho

dynamik wrote: »

That's the plan. Thanks again

The pressing issue is activesync for their new iPhones, but HP informed me that was added in SP2 of 2003. I can probably buy myself some more if I can get that setup quickly.

Hewlett Packard or yours truly?

(HeroPsycho's approved abbreviated name is "Hero". Mainly because of... well, the above... )

HeroPsycho

Slowhand wrote: »

I'd like to have a moment of silence for dynamik's sanity.

Read up all you can, follow the step-by-step guides, and pray. That's all I can tell you, having spent the better part of 2007 working exclusively with SBS boxes on various networks. There will be blood, oh yes. . .

Oh, come on, SBS isn't that bad. You just need to know that sometimes there's the normal way and the SBS way. Whenever you do something major to an SBS server, don't assume it's the same as you'd do on a non-SBS server. I recently ran into an SBS screwup where the engineer tried to uninstall Sharepoint Services from the SBS server because it wasn't being used and was interfering with something. He didn't understand why what he did was bad. That's because he didn't check if there's an SBS way to do it.

How to remove and how to install the Windows Small Business Server 2003 SharePoint Services 2.0 companyweb Web site

A simple google search would have avoided the issue.

Just follow MS's recommendations when working with SBS as if it's the word of God, and you're fine.

Silver Bullet

This brings back nightmares.

We had a customer that was running SBS and decided that they were going to install server 2008 and promote it to a DC AND install exchange 2003 on it. They first made the 2008 server a member server and installed exchange. Then started migrating mail accounts off the SBS server and in the middle of the mail account migration, for some strange reason (only god knows why) tried to copy and paste the exchange database from the SBS to the 2008 box. Took the SBS server offline and made the 2008 server a DC. Seized the FSMO roles on to the 2008 box. When the new exchange server couldn't mount the database, he THEN put the SBS server back on the network. Needless to say, he was f*&^(&d. They didn't have email, users couldn't log in and I could hear the owner of the company yelling at him as he explained this bizzaro process he took to screw up the network.

To top it off, he wasn't running ANY kind of backup on any server what so ever.

I spent most the afternoon, that night and into the next morning repairing that mess.

undomiel

Ouch, that truly does sound painful. SBS is pretty quirky. SBS is what I used to cut my teeth on admin work initially. The wizards it gives you are pretty handy if you don't know what you are doing but it makes it all too easy for you to get lazy about learning how to really manage a network. Fortunately I did not fall into that trap.

HeroPsycho

Well, remember, that isn't SBS quirkiness, that's just all kinds of stupid Silver Bullet is talking about. As I explained to dynamik, sounds like that admin went full retard. (Tropic Thunder rules.)

dynamik

Ok, so I did a survey on-site yesterday, and it was an interesting experience. They have two 2003 servers, and it turns out neither are SBS. I felt like I caught a break there, but then, I saw that they went well beyond full retard. Each Server is a DC for the same domain name, but they are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DOMAINS. They have an Exchange domain, and another one for various file/printer sharing and Quickbooks. They simply created the users in both domains. I died when I saw that

Anyway, here's the situation I find myself in now. The Exchange Server is on an HP DL380 G5. It's got 2gb of RAM and four 146gb SAS drives in RAID-5 (which I believe is a terrible configuration for Exchange). Does anyone have any suggestions for hardware upgardes/configuration changes? They can add four more drives and another six sticks of ram (I believe). They only have 30-40 users, but they're growing quite quickly. I was tentatively thinking of a mirror for the OS, the mailboxes, and the logs, but I only have cursory knowledge of Exchange hardware configurations. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Now, here's the tricky part. I need to put Server 2008 on Exchange 2007 on the box they're currently using. I guess my only option is to P2V their existing setup and then load that up in Hyper-V once I get 2008 installed. I also installed a Windows Storage Server machine (first time touching that), and it looks like that includes Virtual Server, so I might be able to use that as well...

royal

A possibility is 2 disks for OS/Logs and 4 disks for Database in Raid 10. If you do this, make sure you create a dedicated partition for logs; not for performance so if their logs fill up the partition it doesn't cripple the OS. Or 2/2/2.

Personally, I'd probably do 2 Raid 1 and 4 Raid 10 as database uses up quite a bit more IOPS than the logs do. Raid 1 = Bad Read/Good Write. Raid 10 = Great Read/Great Write. Logs need better write and Database needs good both but more so reads than write.

dynamik

That's exactly the info I was looking for; thank you so much

HeroPsycho

You're gonna need far more RAM than that for E2K7. You need 4GB to run HT, MB, and CAS roles plus 2 to 5MB's per user depending on their usage. That's just for Exchange alone. Tack on additional resources for anything else like AD or AV running on the server.

For that few users, you could get by with the tlogs on a mirror with the OS drive, and the DB's on their own disks.

dynamik

Yea, I think I'm going to get another pair of 2gb sticks and see how that works. Thanks again.

mgeorge

I never was a big fan of microsoft upgrades per se, "upgrading" stuff seems to cause more problems then they fix for a lot of microsoft products but of course I'm speaking from my past experiences.

Given the scenario, I'd probably virtualize the server using vmware converter then rebuild the new server from scratch, afterward migrate exchange, AD and other stuff to the new build and deploy it with as little as a few minutes of down time and still have the old server build archived if it was ever needed after the new deployment.

but that's just me

Also note that SBS2008 is x64 only, if the server is currently running x32 architecture, this may complicate stuff a little bit more.

dynamik

Thanks for the response Matt

Exchange 2003 to 2007 will always involve a clean installation because you will always be going from a 32-bit platform to a 64-bit platform (though there is an unsupported 32-bit version of 2007 for testing).

It's tricky in this scenario because I only have the one machine to work with, which is why virtualization is required, as you suggested. I was just going to load up Hyper-V, but now that I know I have an ESX-compatible machine, I might go with ESXi.