Technology Notebook

W2K & Exchange Upgrade

Quoted from 101communications-news.com:

** Boswell's Q&A: At the Fork In the Exchange Migration Path

I'm moving our network from mixed to native because our Exchange
server is 15.3 G. I've read that Exchange can run in a mixed
environment -- yes or no? In one article I've read, it says that
if you are a member of the Enterprise Domain, Administrators,
Domain Admins and Exchange Admins that you will not have to run
forestprep and domainprep runs when you first try to install
Exchange 2000. Will this let me install Exchange 2000 in a mixed
environment and move mailboxes from my Exchange 5.5 SP4 server,
or will I have to be in native mode?
--Russ Moss

I want to ask you for a recommended upgrade path for Exchange 5.5
to Exchange 2000. My company is preparing to migrate to Exchange
2000 and have had varying opinions. Some say the best approach is
to install Exchange 2000 on a separate box and install the AD
connector. Others have recommended doing a full migration by
creating the Exchange 2000 box, ex-merging all mailboxes out and
importing them into Exchange 2000. Do you have a recommended
approach or is it simply a matter of preference?
-- Marty Kineen, MCSE, CCNP
Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania

/--------------------------------------------------------------\
| GOT A WINDOWS OR EXCHANGE QUESTION OR NEED TROUBLESHOOTING |
| HELP? Or maybe you want a better explanation than provided |
| in the manuals? Describe your dilemma in an e-mail to Bill |
| at mailto:boswell@101com.com; the best questions get |
| answered in this column. |
| |
| When you send your questions, please include your full first |
| and last name, location, certifications (if any) with your |
| message. (If you prefer to remain anonymous, specify this in |
| your message but submit the requested information for |
| verification purposes.) |
\--------------------------------------------------------------/

Russ and Marty,

Your questions are somewhat related. You both are running legacy
Exchange in a Windows 2000 domain and you're looking for the most
efficient upgrade path.

Russ, you'll need to shift your domain to Windows 2000 native mode
so that you can create Universal security groups to act as
Exchange 2000 distribution lists. This means you must either
upgrade or decommission your NT BDCs, then shift the domain to
native mode. This shift does not impact down-level clients nor
does it affect the Exchange 5.5 server.

Marty, in the configuration you've described, the upgrade path
that gets you to a full Exchange 2000 deployment with the least
hassle would be to introduce a new Exchange 2000 server into the
existing sites and use the Active Directory Connector (ADC) to
keep the legacy Exchange directory service in sync with Active
Directory during the migration. You shouldn't need to create a
separate Active Directory domain or a separate Exchange
organization. Once the Exchange 2000 server is in place, move all
the mailboxes and connectors from the legacy Exchange server then
decommission the server and shift to Exchange Native mode. The
documentation walks you through this process.

As for running Forestprep and Domainprep, it's true that both of
these actions are performed when you run Exchange 2000 Setup so
you do not need to run them separately. The documentations calls
them out individually because many organizations divvy up their
admin rights so that one account doesn't have the necessary
permissions to do both. In a single domain configuration, the
simplest way to do the ADC installation and the Exchange 2000
setup is to use the Administrator account for the domain. This
account has full access to the Schema, to the Configuration
container where the Exchange organization will be created, and
to the Domain container where the Exchange system accounts will
be created. The ADC requires a service account in Active
Directory that has Service Account Admin permissions in the
legacy Exchange organization, sites, and configuration container.

Before you can run Exchange Setup, you’ll need to install the ADC
and create recipient and public folder connection agreements to
each of your sites. You should be running Exchange 5.5 SP3 or
higher on at least one Exchange server in each site, although I
recommend getting all your Exchange servers to the latest service
pack prior to deploying Exchange 2000.

The ADC modifies the schema, so you'll need to run it using an
account that is in the Schema Admins group. Plus you'll need
admin rights for the Configuration container. The simplest way
to do this is to use the Administrator account for the domain.
When you run Exchange Setup, you’ll modify the schema again so
the same permission rules apply.

Good luck and let me know how things turn out.

Bill Boswell