Topic: Transition from M$ Poxy (sic) Server to Mitel

[Michael Smith]

Ladies & Gentlemen:  In my continuing quest to eradicate M$ from server duties at my clients' offices, I am planning to get away from one client's use of M$ Proxy Server on a Small Business Server box.  Would any of you have any advice on how best to proceed, noting that the SBS is the ONLY file server in this small office and it is also the DHCP and Exchange server.

My first thought is to touch it as little as possible and have the SBS hand out the e-smith's IP address as the Internet gateway in its DHCP scope.  

My second idea is to disable DHCP services on the SBS box and let the e-smith box hand out IP addresses in the established range (10.0.0.x).  This has the benefit of bringing the client farther along toward removing the SBS from the network entirely, but I'm a bit reluctant to make such sweeping changes all at once on this production network.

I welcome your input.  I have in fact RTFM and have searched the forums ... have gleaned lots of useful information and now want opinions as to which is the best approach.  (I would also welcome ideas other than the two above!)

Regards, Michael Smith

[Patrick]

Michael,

As a long time M$FT user and admin, and recent SBS-to-SME convert - I commend you on your decision to make the change.  You will not regret it.  I moved a client of mine off of SBS about 4 months ago...and most people don't even know it happened!  lol

I wouldn't stop at just the Proxy piece though...I'd let the SME box handle ALL of the SBS chores (file/print, mail, proxy, dhcp).

You don't mention if the SBS box is acting as the PDC for the network - but I assume if that's the only server there - that it is.  You could also have the SME box handle the PDC chores.

IMHO, I'd say go with your 'second idea' (let the SME box handle dhcp) - it's not really that big of a deal to implement, and if you run into problems you can simply turn off dhcp on the SME box and turn dhcp back on on the SBS machine. But trust me - having already done this very same switch...you won't have any problems.

I'd be happy to answer any more questions, so let me know.  Good luck.

Regards,
Patrick

[John Crisp]

I've just done the same - couldn't live with SBS.

I spent a good couple of weekends and several evenings with the old disk with SBS disconnected and some new disks plugged in and tried various options to see what happened. If you can do that you are laughing. I was fortunate enough to be able to do this.

Just plugged the old one back in on Sundays and let it go back as was. After a couple of weekends, I just flipped the whole lot over and bye bye SBS.

It isn't all straight forward, and you forget a million small things to change, but it IS worth it.

I think that it is much eaasier than trying to get the two machines to live together.

Good luck - if I can help then let me know.

B. Rgds
John

[Andy Parkinson]

If you let the SME server do the DHCP serving then it will automatically set itself up as the WINS server. If that is the case then you will need to change the network settings on the SBS so that the wins client settings are the ip address of the SBS box. The SBS server must be left with a static IP address that is not in the range set by  the SME server. I think that the case for using DHCP from the the SME box is often one that is dependant on spare resources. If the SME is only doing proxying to the web and is a reasonably powerful machine then it is worth using it's DHCP server and disabling the DHCP service and the Wins service on the SBS server. SBS is a very rescource hungry piece of software and any service that can be disabled  can only help. Please remember that the dns settings of the SBS server and the default gateway must changed to the SME box. Also remember to disable the DHCP service and the WINS service on the SBS box before introducing the SME box to the network as this can cause all manner of problems. If this all works then you should uninstall proxy client from each workstation and remove the proxy server settings from internet explorer. Make sure that you do not set the SME box up as a domain controller as exchange needs to run on a domain controller and having another one on the network would probably cause problems as they would both think they were the PDC. Finally one last problem but a biggie is to do with email retrieval. If you are retrieving via pop 3 then you don't really have any problems but if you are retrieving via SMTP then you will have . If the SBS box does the dialing out  itself then you can use ETRN to receive your email but if you are using a router then Exchange gets confused about how to get the mail. Exchange was really designed to be permantly connected to the internet  or via a modem or Terminal adapter. If you use a router it cannot schedule dialups and you will have to write scripts to deque the remote server. This may not be the case with you but if you need any help with this please let me know. Or maybe it is time to change your mail over to SME as well because this can handle ETRN scheduling a lot better Hope this has been of some help