Modrapheniac

Hi Guys and Gals,
I've been tasked with building a new Exchange 5.5 server, and moving all data onto it from our old server. I need to achieve most of this during working hours, with the final stages taking place in the evening. The new server will have the same name as the old server, for obvious reasons. I was just going to give it a temporary name and then change it when it becomes live, but I understand this can cause major problems !
Any pointers or advice would be most appreciated. I've checked Microsoft Q155216 and it's basically saying copy and paste ! I thought I read somewhere of a tool that migrated everything for you in a matter of minutes !!

Thanks for looking,

Darrell

ChrisB

Sorry, you can't change the name of a thread once it's started.

http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm will probably be useful though.

Modrapheniac

Cheers Chris,
Looked on there already, some very useful stuff ! Thanks for getting back to me.
All the best,
Darrell

paulmon

One way to do it is to export your GAL and then use a utility called EXMERGE. This will export all your mailboxes into PST files.

You then build the new server with the same name into the same organisation, site. Then import the GAL and create the mailboxes then run EXMERGE again and import the PST's into the mailboxes.

However if you use EXMERGE you will lose single instance storage.

Paul

ozzy

Darrell,

Is your existing server a PDC/BDC or just a Member Server? What's the new mail server going to be ??

Can you also give a bit more info on how your Exchange is configured? such as # of sites? # of mail server? # & types of connectors?

Have you considered just a simple full backup and restore??

Stefan

Paul Caley

Dude,
I'll be doing the very same thing tomorrow! Alas one of our exchange servers ran out of disk space during the week and as it was a raid 5 disk array we were stuffed!
Built new sever, bdc exactly the same, installed exchange same site name then just restored the databases.
Now i've got to do it again as the above was done as a temp fix, set new server up today but can't do NT & Exchange and restore until we take the temp fix server offline .... nice

ozzy

Paul,

Make sure your new RAID hardware supports dynamic array's. I've added extra disks to Dell, HP, IBM and Compaq servers and it expanded the RAID array for us. No rebuilding of the OS, just an hour or so of frantic disk acttivity and your done

Unless it goes t!ts up and you need to restore Either way it's a lot less hassle.

Stefan

Paul Caley

Stefan,
Indeed this has been a lesson in future disk array set up!!

Regards,

Paul

ChrisB

I've done this for a customer in the past...

Setup the new Server with a new name etc and install Exchange. Add the new Exchange Server into the existing site so it talks to the current Exchange box.

Then you can use the Move Mailbox command in Exchange Admin to shuffle the mailboxes over to the new box one at a time or in groups. As long as the old server stays up, the next time the clients login, they will automatically change the server address in the Exchange Server add-in for Outlook.

Once everyone is ported there's a couple more bits to move like Free/Busy info and then you kill can off the old box.

Ga22ar

I'd vouch for that method as well, having done it a few times - works flawlessy - bascially you're in a server migration situation..

Of course if you dont have the spare server, or your h/w has died this is of no help what so ever...

Mr Paulmon. Still about eh - exmerge ? you like to make work hard for yourself dont't you ;-o

Still crunching carrots ?, hows the pebble dashed P1..

cheerio

ChrisB

It worked well for me. Two things to note:

a) When you transfer a mailbox, the user has to be logged off
b) It takes a bloody age to do several hundred mailboxes full of junk.

If you can, get your users to purge out their mailboxes before hand.

Andrewza

Eep! I'm surrounded by windows admins!