Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Transitioning from Exchange 2000/2003 to Exchange Server 2007 (Part 2)

Transitioning from Exchange 2000/2003 to Exchange Server 2007 (Part 2)



If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

Installing Exchange Server 2007

We have reached part 2 in this 3 part article series covering how you transition from an Exchange 2000/2003 to an Exchange 2007 Server deployed in the same Active Directory Forest. For the purpose of this article we will only install one Exchange 2007 Server, and we’ll do so by selecting a typical installation of Exchange 2007. Since a typical installation of Exchange Server 2007 installs the Mailbox, Hub Transport and Client Access Server roles on the respective server, we must make sure the following software and Windows components are installed on the server prior to launching Exchange 2007 Setup.

Required Software

  • Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 (including this update)
  • Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0 (bear in mind MMC 3.0 is installed by default when using Windows Server 2003 R2)
  • Windows PowerShell V1.0 (can be found here or on the Exchange 2007 DVD media)

Required Windows Components

Mailbox Server

  • Enable network COM+ access
  • Internet Information Services
  • World Wide Web Service

When installing the Mailbox Server role, you also need to make sure you install the hotfixes mentioned in MS KB article 904639 and 918980.

Client Access Server

  • World Wide Web Service
  • Remote procedure call (RPC) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Proxy Windows networking component (Required only if you are deploying clients that will use the Outlook Anywhere functionality, previously called RPC over HTTP)
  • ASP.NET v2.0

Hub Transport Server

No additional Windows components are required by the Hub Transport server; however you must make sure that the SMTP and NNTP services are NOT installed.

Note
Listing the hardware requirements for Exchange 2007 is outside the scope of this article's series. For information on hardware requirements see this section in the Exchange Server 2007 Online Documentation.

When ready navigate to the network share containing the Exchange 2007 Setup files, or insert the Exchange Server 2007 DVD media, then double-click on Setup.exe. This will bring us to the Exchange 2007 splash screen shown in Figure 2.1. Click Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange.


Figure 2.1: Exchange 2007 Setup Splash Screen

Setup will copy the necessary files and soon after begin initializing. After initialization completes, you will be taken to the first step in the Installation Wizard, the Introduction page where you should click Next.

You will now be presented with and need to accept the terms of the end-user license agreement (EULA). I know reading the License Agreement is not among the most exciting things in the world, but you should at least spend a couple of minutes skimming through it. When you have done so, select I accept the terms in the license agreement, and then click Next. After clicking Next you will be taken to the Error Reporting page, where you should decide if you want to enable this feature or not. When you have done so click Next.

As you can see in Figure 2.2, now is the time to select the type of installation we want to perform, as we’re going to do a typical installation of Exchange Server 2007, select this option, then click Next.


Figure 2.2: Selecting a Typical Exchange Server Installation

In order to establish mail flow between the Exchange 2000/2003 and the Exchange 2007 routing groups, we now need to create a routing group connector (Figure 2.3). To do so click Browse then select the Exchange 2000 or 2003 bridgehead server to which you want to connect Exchange 2007, then click Next.


Figure 2.3: Specifying an Exchange 2000 or 2003 Routing Group

The Exchange 2007 Setup wizard will now go through a set of prerequisite checks in order to see whether Exchange is ready to be installed. If you have installed all the necessary software, Windows components and hotfixes, it should complete without any warnings or errors. If this is not the case you should review the issue and if possible click the Recommended Action link in order to see an explanation of or a resolution to the warning or error.

When all issues have been resolved click the Install button and let Exchange Setup copy the necessary Exchange files and install and configure each server role.

Note:
If you didn’t run any of the setup preparation switches mentioned in part 1 of this 3 part article series, the Exchange 2007 Setup wizard will prepare the Active Directory before it begins installing the respective server roles.

When Setup has completed installing all the Server roles, click Finish (Figure 2.4).


Figure 2.4: Exchange 2007 Setup Completed

Finalizing Deployment

With the Exchange 2007 Server installation in place let’s launch the Exchange Management Console (EMC). Note that the first time the EMC is launched it will show you the Finalize Deployment tab under the Microsoft Exchange node as shown in Figure 2.5. You should examine each of the deployment tasks listed here, and perform the ones that are relevant for your environment.


Figure 2.5: Finalize Deployment Tab in the Exchange Management Console

Since each deployment task is explained in a step by step fashion, I won’t go into details about each of them here.

End-to-End Scenario Tasks

In addition to the Deployment Tasks we just covered, there’s also an End-to-End Scenario tab (Figure 2.6), which provides a list of tasks that are optional for configuring features, but you should at least skim through each of them and see whether any of these tasks are relevant to your Exchange environment.


Figure 2.6: End-to-End Scenario Tab in the Exchange Management Console

Again, since each task under this tab is pretty much self-explanatory, covering each of them is outside the scope of this articles series.

Global Settings

Global Settings that have been configured on an Exchange 2000 or 2003 Server will be transferred to the Exchange 2007 Server automatically, as these settings are stored and read from Active Directory. This means that recipient policies, Internet Message Formats, SMTP connectors and Exchange delegation permissions are applied to user mailboxes stored on Exchange 2007 as well. Figure 2.7 below shows you the Default Policy which was originally created on our Exchange 2003 Server.


Figure 2.7: Default Policy in the Exchange 2007 Management Console

Also note that when the Exchange 2007 Server has been deployed in the legacy Exchange organization, any of the organization-level settings should be managed using Exchange 2007 Management tools (EMC or EMS) during the co-existence period.

That was it for part 2 but you can look forward to part 3, which is the last article in this article series, which will be published in the near future. In part 3 we’ll replicate public folders, move mailboxes as well as a few other things before we finally decommission the Exchange 2003 server. See you then!

If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

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