MartinT
19-08-2011, 18:14
Ever feel like you've been through the wars trying to get a project completed and finally driven home with a big smile of contentment?
In early July I started the process of migration (actually, transition in Microsoft speak) from our Exchange 2007 e-mail server to Exchange 2010. The kicker is that I wanted to end up with E2010 on our primary production server, which is more powerful than our test server, but you cannot upgrade. So I started down the road of Active Directory schema upgrade, installing E2010 in parallel with E2007 on a test server, migrating connectors, pointers, mailboxes, public databases, changing DNS etc. etc. If you've done it, you've also got more grey hairs like me. There were several serious sticking points along the way, not to mention having to keep e-mail services up at all times as it is so mission critical these days. I spent many mornings at 5:30am in the office doing things before the staff were up to notice. Google was very much MY FRIEND during all of this, and I also found some fixes that I could detail back onto the forums so it was not just take, take.
Anyway, to cut a boring story short (are you asleep yet?), we now have a shiny new e-mail system, Exchange Server 2010, sitting on Server 2008 R2, on our original machine with 24GB RAM, quad Xeon processors, 15k RPM SAS drives and it's all working perfectly. Outlook and Outlook Web App (webmail) work both inside and outside the school, photos of the sender are displayed, retention details are shown, the Offline Address Book shows all details of staff, calendar free/busy is displayed and it's FAST.
I am exhausted and am going away to Berlin next week for a few days. I may not be back...
In early July I started the process of migration (actually, transition in Microsoft speak) from our Exchange 2007 e-mail server to Exchange 2010. The kicker is that I wanted to end up with E2010 on our primary production server, which is more powerful than our test server, but you cannot upgrade. So I started down the road of Active Directory schema upgrade, installing E2010 in parallel with E2007 on a test server, migrating connectors, pointers, mailboxes, public databases, changing DNS etc. etc. If you've done it, you've also got more grey hairs like me. There were several serious sticking points along the way, not to mention having to keep e-mail services up at all times as it is so mission critical these days. I spent many mornings at 5:30am in the office doing things before the staff were up to notice. Google was very much MY FRIEND during all of this, and I also found some fixes that I could detail back onto the forums so it was not just take, take.
Anyway, to cut a boring story short (are you asleep yet?), we now have a shiny new e-mail system, Exchange Server 2010, sitting on Server 2008 R2, on our original machine with 24GB RAM, quad Xeon processors, 15k RPM SAS drives and it's all working perfectly. Outlook and Outlook Web App (webmail) work both inside and outside the school, photos of the sender are displayed, retention details are shown, the Offline Address Book shows all details of staff, calendar free/busy is displayed and it's FAST.
I am exhausted and am going away to Berlin next week for a few days. I may not be back...