Topic: SME to Exchange 2003 Migration

[danbaylis]

Hello all,

This is my first post so I thought I'd start with a quick Hello  

I have just taken over a 60 user site running SME V5 and they want to migrate to Exchange 2003.

Can someone please advise me on the best way to migrate the mailboxes from SME to Exchange 2003.

Many many thanks

Dan

[Librarian]

First off, a couple of gotchas with Exchange 2003 :

1. There IS a file size limit of 16Gb on the mail database (with Exchange 2003 Standard). Apparently the Enterprise version does not have this limitation.
2. It is recommended that you DO implement mailbox size limits.
3. Do backups regularly.
4. Don't try to install and run Exchange 2003 on sub-par hardware, you will have problems like dropped connections and so on.
4. Read all the information pertaining Exchange 2003 BEFORE installing it, there is a couple of gotchas.
5. It is recommended that Exchange 2003 be installed in an Active Directory domain.
6. Good luck.

Regards

Lib

[danbaylis]

Thanks for the reply.

I have quite a deep knowledge of Exchange, my concern lies with the SME end of the migration.  

Cheers

Dan

[MSmith]

Do you mean just migrating the usernames & groups or is mail sitting in the mailboxes, i.e. they're using webmail or IMAP?  You can use the "Lazy Admin Tools" to dump the usernames & groups, then massage the output into a batchfile that would set those up in your Active Directory; 60 users would be enough to make that worthwhile, I think.  If there's mail to be migrated that'll be much more problematic.  You might be able to get away with using an Outlook client; pull the email from the SME box, then drag & drop into an Exchange box.

There might be a better way, but I can't think of it.

[danbaylis]

Thanks for the reply.

To be honest the whole Network is a mess running a mix of Macs, the SME File and Email, and a badly rolled out AD.

I am going to create a new AD and probably use SBS with Exchange 2003, I'm hoping that I can use Outlook to move the mails across from SME, I foresee many many head aches  

[dmay]

First off, a couple of gotchas with Exchange 2003 :

1. There IS a file size limit of 16Gb on the mail database (with Exchange 2003 Standard).

FYI, this has been increased to 75GB with the release of Exchange 2003 SP2:

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/sp2/overview.mspx

I highly recommend Exchange 2003 SP2 as it adds many new enhanced features and bugfixes.

As for moving SME mailboxes to Exchange, do it inside Outlook 2003, one-by-one for each of your 60 users. Set up the Exchange Server, set up your users, set up each users Outlook 2003 profile, then import old mail into Outlook either from their previous POP mail client or via an IMAP link to their SME server mail account.