Hi,

we are running exchange 2003 standard edition with sp2 on windows server 
2003 sp2. Now the mail database is about 70 GB, we are planning to upgrade. 
Please give me some recommendation for my question below: 
1. should we upgrade to 2003 enterprise or 2007 standard edition? which one 
is easier and better?
2. our server hardware is out of date as well, we plan to move to a better 
server. should I upgrade the old exchange and move mailboxes to the new 
server or should I move the mailboxes to the new server and upgrade the new 
server?
3. since the new server has the different computer, do we have to change the 
outlook configuration for each of the users?

Any help will be highly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Lisa

Inline.....

"Lisa"  wrote in message 
news:84548FB2-3054-4079-8A63-42C84EB57ADB@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> we are running exchange 2003 standard edition with sp2 on windows server
> 2003 sp2. Now the mail database is about 70 GB, we are planning to 
> upgrade.
> Please give me some recommendation for my question below:
> 1. should we upgrade to 2003 enterprise or 2007 standard edition? which 
> one
> is easier and better?

You cant upgrade a server to 2007. You would need to deploy a new 2007 and 
migrate the data.


> 2. our server hardware is out of date as well, we plan to move to a better
> server. should I upgrade the old exchange and move mailboxes to the new
> server or should I move the mailboxes to the new server and upgrade the 
> new
> server?

Thats up to you. If you want 2007, this is your chance. Of course if you 
want to buy some time, upgrading the existing server to 2003 enterprise 
edition is certainly the easy option.

> 3. since the new server has the different computer, do we have to change 
> the
> outlook configuration for each of the users?
>
When you add a new server to an existing org and move the mailboxes, Outlook 
will automagically detect the new location and update itself.

Yeah, it all depends on how conservative you want to be with the
project.  It's definitely easier to get another 2k3 server up on ENT
level and move your mailboxes to that to give your databases room to
breath.  However I do recommend that you keep the mailstores to
25-30gb.  Microsoft recommends no more than 50gb per store due to
management issues.  We had a mailstore 130gb in size, and I had to do
an offline defrag to recover a LOT of whitespace due to spam mailboxes
that get purged.  It would have taken a week and a half to process
that size store.

I'm not sure what your limits are on licensing, but if you can, bring
up enough exchange servers to balance the stores.  If you have spam
catching mailboxes, put that on its own exchange server and enable
circular logging.  If you lose it, no big yank...it's spam. :)

We're rearranging mailboxes and moving our entire exchange 2k3
organization to VMs off of physical boxes.  Once the mailstores are
balanced out, we'll start moving to exchange 2k7.

Good luck with the process!

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:40:22 -0700 (PDT), Jamer1
 wrote:

>Yeah, it all depends on how conservative you want to be with the
>project.  It's definitely easier to get another 2k3 server up on ENT
>level and move your mailboxes to that to give your databases room to
>breath.  However I do recommend that you keep the mailstores to
>25-30gb.  Microsoft recommends no more than 50gb per store due to
>management issues.  We had a mailstore 130gb in size, and I had to do
>an offline defrag to recover a LOT of whitespace due to spam mailboxes
>that get purged.  It would have taken a week and a half to process
>that size store.

Better to just move mailboxes and then remove the empty store.


>
>I'm not sure what your limits are on licensing, but if you can, bring
>up enough exchange servers to balance the stores.  If you have spam
>catching mailboxes, put that on its own exchange server and enable
>circular logging.  If you lose it, no big yank...it's spam. :)

Better yet. Dont bother with sending SPAM to a mailbox.

>
>We're rearranging mailboxes and moving our entire exchange 2k3
>organization to VMs off of physical boxes.  Once the mailstores are
>balanced out, we'll start moving to exchange 2k7.
>
>Good luck with the process!

> >Yeah, it all depends on how conservative you want to be with the
> >project.  It's definitely easier to get another 2k3 server up on ENT
> >level and move your mailboxes to that to give your databases room to
> >breath.  However I do recommend that you keep the mailstores to
> >25-30gb.  Microsoft recommends no more than 50gb per store due to
> >management issues.  We had a mailstore 130gb in size, and I had to do
> >an offline defrag to recover a LOT of whitespace due to spam mailboxes
> >that get purged.  It would have taken a week and a half to process
> >that size store.
>
> Better to just move mailboxes and then remove the empty store.
>
You're are correct sir...that's what we ended up doing. :)

>
> >I'm not sure what your limits are on licensing, but if you can, bring
> >up enough exchange servers to balance the stores.  If you have spam
> >catching mailboxes, put that on its own exchange server and enable
> >circular logging.  If you lose it, no big yank...it's spam. :)
>
Depends on your antispam solution.  Mine is fairly aggressive due to
filters and module order.  Occasionally legit stuff gets caught...not
often, but its important that it comes into a spam mailbox as it gets
archived from there into our system for our users to search.

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:03:53 -0700 (PDT), Jamer1
 wrote:

>
>> >Yeah, it all depends on how conservative you want to be with the
>> >project.  It's definitely easier to get another 2k3 server up on ENT
>> >level and move your mailboxes to that to give your databases room to
>> >breath.  However I do recommend that you keep the mailstores to
>> >25-30gb.  Microsoft recommends no more than 50gb per store due to
>> >management issues.  We had a mailstore 130gb in size, and I had to do
>> >an offline defrag to recover a LOT of whitespace due to spam mailboxes
>> >that get purged.  It would have taken a week and a half to process
>> >that size store.
>>
>> Better to just move mailboxes and then remove the empty store.
>>
>You're are correct sir...that's what we ended up doing. :)
>
>>
>> >I'm not sure what your limits are on licensing, but if you can, bring
>> >up enough exchange servers to balance the stores.  If you have spam
>> >catching mailboxes, put that on its own exchange server and enable
>> >circular logging.  If you lose it, no big yank...it's spam. :)
>>
>Depends on your antispam solution.  Mine is fairly aggressive due to
>filters and module order.  Occasionally legit stuff gets caught...not
>often, but its important that it comes into a spam mailbox as it gets
>archived from there into our system for our users to search.

But at some point, that SPAM mailbox must get so huge its almost
unsearchable yes?

> But at some point, that SPAM mailbox must get so huge its almost
> unsearchable yes?

I have mailbox management that is set to run on the spam server two
days a week.  Deletion settings Limit is set to 1 day... I have a
couple mailbox policies that delete items out the ithe mailbox for my
spam mailboxes.  We get about 4gb of spam a week...it's awful.

Each email gets journaled into our archive server which I purge after
three months.  That gives our users enough time to search the archive
in case something was nabbed by accident.

So our users don't really end up searching the mailbox...we used to do
it that way "back in the day" of only 3K spam messages a week.  Users
(and admins) search the archive rather than a spam mailbox.

Hi Martin,

Thank you so much for your help. If I would like to go with 2007 standard 
edition, is the steps below are correct? Please advice.

1. set up 2007 on the new server in the same org
2. move mailboxes from 2003 to 2007
3. if the migration fails, I am still able to go back to 2003, right? 

another question is if it is a good idea to upgrade winder server to 2008 at 
this time?

Thanks again,

"Martin Blackstone" wrote:

> Inline.....
> 
> "Lisa"  wrote in message 
> news:84548FB2-3054-4079-8A63-42C84EB57ADB@microsoft.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > we are running exchange 2003 standard edition with sp2 on windows server
> > 2003 sp2. Now the mail database is about 70 GB, we are planning to 
> > upgrade.
> > Please give me some recommendation for my question below:
> > 1. should we upgrade to 2003 enterprise or 2007 standard edition? which 
> > one
> > is easier and better?
> 
> You cant upgrade a server to 2007. You would need to deploy a new 2007 and 
> migrate the data.
> 
> 
> > 2. our server hardware is out of date as well, we plan to move to a better
> > server. should I upgrade the old exchange and move mailboxes to the new
> > server or should I move the mailboxes to the new server and upgrade the 
> > new
> > server?
> 
> Thats up to you. If you want 2007, this is your chance. Of course if you 
> want to buy some time, upgrading the existing server to 2003 enterprise 
> edition is certainly the easy option.
> 
> > 3. since the new server has the different computer, do we have to change 
> > the
> > outlook configuration for each of the users?
> >
> When you add a new server to an existing org and move the mailboxes, Outlook 
> will automagically detect the new location and update itself. 
>

Hi Lisa,
This is pretty well documented.
Start here:
http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Transitioning-Exchange-2000-2003-Exchange-Server-2007-Part1.html

Links for parts 2 and 3 are at the bottom.


"Lisa"  wrote in message 
news:3C93B34E-4AA1-4677-BDA9-3F8E752236ED@microsoft.com...
> Hi Martin,
>
> Thank you so much for your help. If I would like to go with 2007 standard
> edition, is the steps below are correct? Please advice.
>
> 1. set up 2007 on the new server in the same org
> 2. move mailboxes from 2003 to 2007
> 3. if the migration fails, I am still able to go back to 2003, right?
>
> another question is if it is a good idea to upgrade winder server to 2008 
> at
> this time?
>
> Thanks again,
>
> "Martin Blackstone" wrote:
>
>> Inline.....
>>
>> "Lisa"  wrote in message
>> news:84548FB2-3054-4079-8A63-42C84EB57ADB@microsoft.com...
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > we are running exchange 2003 standard edition with sp2 on windows 
>> > server
>> > 2003 sp2. Now the mail database is about 70 GB, we are planning to
>> > upgrade.
>> > Please give me some recommendation for my question below:
>> > 1. should we upgrade to 2003 enterprise or 2007 standard edition? which
>> > one
>> > is easier and better?
>>
>> You cant upgrade a server to 2007. You would need to deploy a new 2007 
>> and
>> migrate the data.
>>
>>
>> > 2. our server hardware is out of date as well, we plan to move to a 
>> > better
>> > server. should I upgrade the old exchange and move mailboxes to the new
>> > server or should I move the mailboxes to the new server and upgrade the
>> > new
>> > server?
>>
>> Thats up to you. If you want 2007, this is your chance. Of course if you
>> want to buy some time, upgrading the existing server to 2003 enterprise
>> edition is certainly the easy option.
>>
>> > 3. since the new server has the different computer, do we have to 
>> > change
>> > the
>> > outlook configuration for each of the users?
>> >
>> When you add a new server to an existing org and move the mailboxes, 
>> Outlook
>> will automagically detect the new location and update itself.
>>

Hi Jamer1, Thank you so much for your help! Since our database is close to 75 
GB and it increases about 500 MB everyday, I plan to do defrag before upgrade 
to give us more time. Can you give me some suggestion for how to free more 
space? Is it a good idea to have users archive their old email and empty 
delete folder?

Thanks for your help again,

Lisa

"Jamer1" wrote:

> Yeah, it all depends on how conservative you want to be with the
> project.  It's definitely easier to get another 2k3 server up on ENT
> level and move your mailboxes to that to give your databases room to
> breath.  However I do recommend that you keep the mailstores to
> 25-30gb.  Microsoft recommends no more than 50gb per store due to
> management issues.  We had a mailstore 130gb in size, and I had to do
> an offline defrag to recover a LOT of whitespace due to spam mailboxes
> that get purged.  It would have taken a week and a half to process
> that size store.
> 
> I'm not sure what your limits are on licensing, but if you can, bring
> up enough exchange servers to balance the stores.  If you have spam
> catching mailboxes, put that on its own exchange server and enable
> circular logging.  If you lose it, no big yank...it's spam. :)
> 
> We're rearranging mailboxes and moving our entire exchange 2k3
> organization to VMs off of physical boxes.  Once the mailstores are
> balanced out, we'll start moving to exchange 2k7.
> 
> Good luck with the process!
>

On Jun 17, 2:25 pm, Lisa  wrote:
> Hi Jamer1, Thank you so much for your help! Since our database is close to 75
> GB and it increases about 500 MB everyday, I plan to do defrag before upgrade
> to give us more time. Can you give me some suggestion for how to free more> space? Is it a good idea to have users archive their old email and empty
> delete folder?
>
> Thanks for your help again,
>
> Lisa

The defrag is going to take awhile...offline defrag rather.  Offline
defrag will let you reclaim your whitespace.  Online defrags that run
as part of the maintenance schedule usually are once a day.  If you
feel you have a lot of whitespace in the databases due to a spam
mailbox or something that gets purged quite often, then definitely run
an offline defrag.  However, that means your email system is offline.
Microsoft says to estimate 7 minutes per gig for an offline defrag.
You'd best be doing it on a long weekend or a vacation week or
something!  You'll need to copy the reconstructed mailstore as it's
being processed by ESEUTIL to somewhere that has 110% of the space
required by the database.  I've set up a share on my personal machine
with full rights for everyone (not good practice, but its available
only around midnight or whenever I'm doing my maintenance).  After
that, make sure to do a full backup immediately.

Asking users to create PSTs is one way to get items out of their
mailbox, but you won't reclaim that space on the server.  AND then you
have to deal with the nightmare of PSTs everywhere (on their local
system or on the network).  If it's on the local system and the hard
drive dies...goodbye emails...unless you want to restore the entire
mailstore.  Not fun at all...  If you can get users to delete the
items in their deleted items folder, that'd help, but I won't think
you'd get much back in the grand scheme of things.

The best way to limit the amount of space is to use mailbox limits/
quotas...but if its not in place and there are no official policies,
then good luck pushing that one down to the people that have 2gb
mailboxes. :)

Oh by the way...when you bring your first exchange 2k7 server up, be
sure that its a frontend type role...CAS/Hub Transport with no
mailboxes.  From what I've been reading around it will have the
ability to present 2003 mailboxes to your OWA users, but Frontend 2k3
cannot do it for E2k7 mailboxes.

Hi Jamer1,

Thanks again for your help. What do you mean the first 2K7 has to be 
frontend type role? Can I set up backend first and then set up frontend? If 
you can send me the document that you find that will be great!

Thanks,

Lisa

"Jamer1" wrote:

> Oh by the way...when you bring your first exchange 2k7 server up, be
> sure that its a frontend type role...CAS/Hub Transport with no
> mailboxes.  From what I've been reading around it will have the
> ability to present 2003 mailboxes to your OWA users, but Frontend 2k3
> cannot do it for E2k7 mailboxes.
>

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:45:01 -0700, Lisa
 wrote:

>Hi Jamer1,
>
>Thanks again for your help. What do you mean the first 2K7 has to be 
>frontend type role? Can I set up backend first and then set up frontend? If 
>you can send me the document that you find that will be great!

The first server has the be the Client Access Server otherwise you
wont be able to connect via OWA, POP3, IMAP et.c to the Exchange 2007
mailboxes  nor will you be able to access the autodiscovery  and
availibility services.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124008(EXCHG.80).aspx
Upgrading to Exchange 2007




>
>Thanks,
>
>Lisa
>
>"Jamer1" wrote:
>
>> Oh by the way...when you bring your first exchange 2k7 server up, be
>> sure that its a frontend type role...CAS/Hub Transport with no
>> mailboxes.  From what I've been reading around it will have the
>> ability to present 2003 mailboxes to your OWA users, but Frontend 2k3
>> cannot do it for E2k7 mailboxes.
>>