Exchange 5.5 to 2003 migration - Single label domain name is

I need some guidance.

I have a customer that is running Windows 2000 single label domain with
Exchange 5.5. They are experiencing some problems with Active Directory
and I have decided to bring in some new servers running Windows 2003 in
a new domain. I also am upgrading to Exchange 2003.

I am struggling with what my options are to get this migration does as
soon as possible. This customer has about 50 employees with about the
same number of computers. Due to the issues I am seeing with their
current active directory I am wanting to basically build this new
domain with new user, computer accounts, etc. I can handle that, but
the Exchange part is what is getting me. I cannot decide what is the
best course of action? Can I just exmerge the 5.5 mailboxes to pst
files and exmerge them into the new 2003 mailboxes? If I do that what
do I do about their shared calendars? Is a migration something that I
can do during their business hours? If so what course of action should
I take to minimize problems for this customer?

I know that I will be having to go to every computer to rejoin them to
the new domain and also setup Outlook to point to the new Exchange
server if I do not do a straight 5.5 to 2003 exchange migration via
replication, AD connectors, etc.

Any advice would be most helpful.

Thanks!
Henry Isgett
KMK Technologies
Field Engineer, MCSE NT4&2k

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Comments

fondue

It appears that you've done a good deal of reading already. Have you looked into the Exchange Migration tool?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328871/

I used it to migrate a NT4/Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 and it worked quite well. I still needed to clean up a few things and the distribution lists were tricky. Though my migration was smaller, only 24 users, I started on a Sunday and Monday morning they didn't miss a beat. I arrived on site had a cup of coffee then headed for the golf course.

You questioned if this can be done during business hours, that's too risky for me. Will you need DNS changes? Are you going to re-ip?

hhisgett

Will you need DNS changes? Are you going to re-ip?

Well, as I am going to a new AD domain, a DNS change is definitley in the plans. No changes to the network ID's are planned.

I have decided not to attempt to do this during business hours. There are so many avenues to take to get this done...it all just confused the heck out of me.

hhisgett

I think I have found what I was looking for!

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=327304

What do you guys think?

hhisgett

Well, just an update. I was able to get everything migrated over into a Clean Windows 2003 AD environment. Boy was that fun!

I used the exmerge method of migrating the mailboxed and public folders. That was real easy. The migration of the user account to the new domain was no fun. Because the DNS in the old AD domain was so messed up, the computer accounts could not be migrated over using ADMT. I had to go to every machine and disjoin, rejoin, copy profiles, etc. I beer or 2 for me is on the menu tonite!