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Anyone here ever done a Groupwise 8 -> Exchange conversion? I'm planning a migration to finally get off the horrible pile of poo poo that is Groupwise, and in doing so remove the last piece of Novell from our network. I've never touched Exchange from an admin perspective or server maintenance perspective before, so I'm learning from the ground up and doing a lot of reading. So far I've figured out how to make Exchange send emails that it can't find mailboxes for to the Groupwise server, but I haven't found a way to make Groupwise do the same. Worst case is I can have Outlook access the user's Groupwise account until everyone is migrated, but I'd love to be able to have something more elegant in place. Any tips for migrating would be greatly appreciated.
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Jan 29, 2013 20:05
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LmaoTheKid posted:They're not really aware of each other besides O365 pulls nonsynced email from our onsite Exchange 2010 server, as far as I know, this isn't bidirectional. Sounds pretty good. I'm really interested in your progress so thanks for all these updates.
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Jan 29, 2013 23:33
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Last night I attempted to put a new hub transport and client access server in production with my Exchange 2007 infrastructure that I admin, and...it didn't go so well. My plan was to take the new server and give it the same IP as the old one. Both the new server and the old one are VMs so that was easy to do. I got our SSL cert installed. I removed the connectors from the old server. I got the new server up and running at the same IP, aaaand...no delivery. I just can't figure out why. It was set up as closely as I could get it to the old server, and it just sat there and didn't do JACK, even though it was the only active hub transport server in the organization. No errors related that I could find in the system logs. The only thing I can figure is that even though I disconnected the old server, it was still listed in the infrastructure. Could Exchange have been attempting to route mail through it in spite of being told to connect only with the new server?
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Feb 1, 2013 20:09
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Powdered Toast Man posted:My plan was to take the new server and give it the same IP as the old one. This is literally the worst plan for anything Active Directory related, ever. Exchange 2007+ (and 2003 but who the gently caress uses that anymore  ) can have multiple instances of servers living together in perfect harmony. Even 2010 can live together with 2003/2007, etc.Did you shut down the old VM first and then make this new one? If you want to "decommission" an old server, uninstall Exchange off it, and then remove that bitch from the domain. For something like this, I would install the new server(s), move everything to the new ones (while the old one(s) is still running) and then decommission the old one. That is just going on your post and not knowing much about the domain/etc.
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Feb 1, 2013 22:02
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I was specifically told not to completely decommission the old ones so that we would have a fallback option, or whatever. I don't know. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't touch them, because at least I could revert at 5 AM this morning after loving with it all night. The primary reason I went with the same IP is that it was the one set up for external mail communications (via NAT and DNS). I guess I was trying to make it as simple as possible so that none of that would have to be changed. Considering that the new hub transport/client access server was doing the exact same thing as the old one, I didn't think this would be a problem. We're going from this: 1 combined hub transport/client access server that is also running OWA (and it's too much for it), 1 mailbox server To this: 1 hub transport/client access server, 1 client access server dedicated to OWA, 1 mailbox server (the same one) There is some weird stuff going on, like the internal domain name being different than the external domain name, and the fact that they're both .com domains. I also ran into an issue since mail.$company.com pointed to the combo server before, and that's what people were using to get to OWA...I didn't know this beforehand, and then when I brought it up I was told I couldn't change it to, say, webmail.$company.com because "too many people use it." Whatever. We also have journaling set up going to a Barracuda. If I need to yank the old servers completely I can do that; if all else fails I can clone the most important one before I do it so that I can revert to the clone if needed. There's already two servers, including the original Exchange 2003 server, still listed in the infrastructure because they weren't properly removed. They don't seem to be causing problems, but I'm not 100% sure. I also have no idea how to get them out.
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Feb 1, 2013 22:17
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Gyshall gave the best advice you can get. When implementing new servers in an Exchange environment you want to install the new servers, configure the new servers, verify they're working, then uninstall Exchange from the old servers. Uninstalling Exchange is probably the most important part since it will take care of removing all references to the servers from active directory. Once the old servers are fully removed changing the IP address of the newly installed machine to match the old isn't too difficult. Powdered Toast Man posted:There's already two servers, including the original Exchange 2003 server, still listed in the infrastructure because they weren't properly removed. They don't seem to be causing problems, but I'm not 100% sure. I also have no idea how to get them out. They can cause a problem depending on what information is out there in AD (for example you won't be able to install Exchange 2013 since there's still Exchange 2003 in the environment). I believe the best solution here is to install an Exchange 2003 server with the same name/role as the one that was orphaned and then perform an uninstall procedure.
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Feb 1, 2013 23:39
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Will Styles posted:They can cause a problem depending on what information is out there in AD (for example you won't be able to install Exchange 2013 since there's still Exchange 2003 in the environment). I believe the best solution here is to install an Exchange 2003 server with the same name/role as the one that was orphaned and then perform an uninstall procedure.  Seriously? There's no other way? I mean, couldn't I just rip it out in ADSI Edit? That is a problem, because we plan to upgrade to 2013 when we have the money from our client to do so. For us it would be about $44k just for the licensing.
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Feb 2, 2013 05:57
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It is possible to remove the references in ADSI edit, but there's a lot of places you need to check, and I don't think I've seen them all documented in one place. Microsoft's recommendation is to install a server with the same information, so that when you uninstall it removes everything properly. Support article - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396 quote:Remove the Exchange Server 2003 server from Active Directory I had the same situation in my QA environment where someone removed a couple of my physical servers. I had to stand up a couple VMs to install/uninstall just to clean up AD  Edit: Also be aware of any system folders in your public folder store that may have been replicated from a 2003 public folder store. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to install 2013 if they exist. Will Styles fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 08:16
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Welp, I guess I know what I'm going to be doing next week. 
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Feb 2, 2013 17:30
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The best way to get rid of an old server like that is ADSIedit, then remove the server itself from the AD snapin, and then maybe ntdsutil metadata cleanup - I wouldn't mess with installing any more Exchange 2003 servers. Also, of consideration (if it is still an option), this is how we usually provision VMs for our clients where multiple Exchange servers are an option: 2 Hub Transport/Client Access Array servers (if high-availability is a factor) 2+ Mailbox Servers with Database Availability Groups (again, for high availability) 1 Edge Transport in the DMZ (if this is of consideration) Whatever old servers exist (some clients have needs for a legacy exchange server, for whatever reason.) We set up mail.domain.com to point at the Client Access Array, and then have legacy.domain.com point at the old Client Access (2003) stuff, both for internal and external. Also for what it is worth, you shouldn't have to do any nonsense with IP addresses when dealing with Exchange, outside of configuring a static IP on the server during install. DNS should be good enough for all that.
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Feb 2, 2013 23:49
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Where exactly do I need to be looking in ADSI for the old 2003 server? I'm also unsure of how to get mail.$company.com to point to the actual transport server as well as the OWA server. I won't be hosting OWA on the transport server at all. Am I going to have to set up a redirect?
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Feb 4, 2013 02:16
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I just feel like you are going to be in a world of hurt trying to remove all references in ad manually. I would go the reinstall uninstall route
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Feb 4, 2013 05:22
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Syano posted:I just feel like you are going to be in a world of hurt trying to remove all references in ad manually. I would go the reinstall uninstall route Have you actually ever done this? ADSIEdit isn't a world of hurt unless you're not making daily AD backups, which you should be. Reinstalling/uninstalling sounds like a horrible idea, especially if the old server wasn't properly demoted/uninstalled. Powdered Toast Man, check out this knowledgebase article - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396 Here is what you're looking for in ADSIEdit: code:Also, for your hub transport/OWA issue - what does your firewall situation look like? In this case you should probably set up a DNS pointer for smtp.domain.com or something to point at the transport server internally, and then mail.domain.com to point at the Client Access servers externally and internally, if that makes sense. On our outside firewalls we use NAT rules to do this, but there really isn't a need to open SMTP traffic directly on the outside. Also I'd run dcdiag tests on your Domain Controllers to make sure they're not referencing the old servers at all.
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Feb 4, 2013 16:05
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Does anyone here have a link to the proper way to create new users once you cutover to O365? I've been reading even more about the cutover process and once I get everything over to O365 w/SSO and DirSync, you have to convert your users to Mail Enabled Users (otherwise, once you decommission onpremesis exchange, you run into problems). From what I can tell, the only way to do this is to use the attribute editor in AD or I believe you can also use powershell? It's not the biggest of deals but it would be nice if there was a way to create a "New -> MEU" right out of the GUI. Is this possible?
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Feb 4, 2013 16:29
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Hmm. Poking around in ADSI...the old 2003 server is actually in its own administrative group, which does not contain the new servers or really anything else I can see. Would it be safe to just nuke the entire administrative group?
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Feb 4, 2013 17:48
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Gyshall posted:Have you actually ever done this? No and I would never unless I had documentation on where all the references to the old server were located. Really... how hard is it just to install and uninstall instead of asking an internet forum if we think blowing away containers via ADSI is safe?
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Feb 4, 2013 18:29
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Powdered Toast Man posted:Would it be safe to just nuke the entire administrative group? No, do not do that. Just nuke the server entry to start. For what it is worth, those old Administrative Groups are used by Outlook 2003/compatible clients to get free/busy info, IIRC. Again, make sure you have AD backups, and backups of those backups of the backups of the backups.
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Feb 4, 2013 18:32
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Syano posted:No and I would never unless I had documentation on where all the references to the old server were located. Really... how hard is it just to install and uninstall instead of asking an internet forum if we think blowing away containers via ADSI is safe? How hard is it to reinstall and uninstall exchange 2003 in an environment with lingering exchange 2003 gremlins? Sounds like a recipe for pain and suffering to me. The adsiedit route is fine, microsoft even has instructions http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396 Usually these old 2003 servers (especially SBS environments) are so screwed up it's practically required.
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Feb 4, 2013 20:44
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So you're advocating a method you have no idea would even work? Are you aware of how Exchange tracks servers (GUID, product IDs, etc) that your method probably would just make stuff worse? An Install/Reinstall masquerading as the old server sounds like a horrible idea. Honestly if you're doing any sort of Microsoft Active Directory or Exchange level administration, you should probably be familiar with ADSI Edit or NTDSUtil/etc. sanchez posted:Usually these old 2003 servers (especially SBS environments) are so screwed up it's practically required. Every, goddamn, time. This happened at almost every SBS 2003 client we had during transition. I'm glad to be rid of them all now though.
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Feb 4, 2013 20:51
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sanchez posted:The adsiedit route is fine, microsoft even has instructions http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396 I may be reading this wrong, but in the article you (as well as Gyshall and myself have linked) in the section specifically about removing the server using ADSI Edit the article says this right above where you're getting your steps from quote:If you cannot install or run Exchange System Manager, you can use the Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) Edit snap-in to manually remove enough of the server attributes so that you can try a successful reinstallation. This method does not perform cleanups of references to the server object outside the server's own container. We do not recommend that you use this method unless you intend to immediately reinstall the server in the same administrative group. This is because you may have to manually remove or edit many attributes on objects throughout Active Directory. I mean, sure you can go into the servers container and delete the server out of there and it will disappear from System Manager, but just deleting from the Servers container doesn't remove references to the server that exist outside of that container. Sure things will still work, but you may run into some odd problems with those old references hanging around in AD. Powdered Toast Man may run into these problems trying to install Exchange 2013, as it will find references to the Exchange 2003 environment in AD and the install could fail. As far as reinstalling/uninstalling servers, again according to the article all three of us are linking, they are saying that you should only do the ADSI Edit directly if you are going to be doing a reinstall/uninstall right afterwards, and if you are not they do not recommend deleting anything in ADSI Edit.
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Feb 4, 2013 22:05
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That should be enough to get the references out from AD for just the 2003 server, for all intents and purposes. I think I've had to do that before, even in 2003/2007/2010 environment where the old 2003 CAS got hit by a virus and wiped out all the IIS stuff. After deleting the server from ADSI Edit, I'd probably run the Exchange BPA a few times to make sure all was OK from that angle.
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Feb 4, 2013 22:17
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Will Styles posted:
I get what the article is saying, but re installing 2003 just isn't practical sometimes. (can you even do that in an environment with a 2007/2010 exchange server?) In my experience deleting the server object in ADSI Edit after you've migrated mailboxes and everything else from the old server has never caused any issues.
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Feb 4, 2013 22:18
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Gyshall posted:So you're advocating a method you have no idea would even work? Are you aware of how Exchange tracks servers (GUID, product IDs, etc) that your method probably would just make stuff worse? An Install/Reinstall masquerading as the old server sounds like a horrible idea. Ive got a pretty good idea how it would work. The article everyone keeps linking even reccomends reinstallation and immediate uninstallation as a valid way to get everything cleaned up. Unless I had all potential references to the old server in ADSI documented I wouldnt make that my end method of doing this.
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Feb 4, 2013 22:32
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Gyshall posted:After deleting the server from ADSI Edit, I'd probably run the Exchange BPA a few times to make sure all was OK from that angle. That's probably the best way to go. Since if you're going to reinstall/uninstall you have to delete the server using ADSI Edit anyways the best bet is probably to do that first and then see if things are working for your needs. If they are, great, if not you can try reinstalling/uninstalling afterwards. sanchez posted:I get what the article is saying, but re installing 2003 just isn't practical sometimes. (can you even do that in an environment with a 2007/2010 exchange server?) In my experience deleting the server object in ADSI Edit after you've migrated mailboxes and everything else from the old server has never caused any issues. 2003 and 2007/2010 can coexist, I don't think it would be an option for 2013, but it wouldn't be necessary in that case since you wouldn't have been able to install 2013 in the first place. I know it's not very practical, but it's the cleanest way to handle things according to Microsoft.
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Feb 4, 2013 23:03
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I am so glad that I made a new domain when I transitioned from our old SBS2003 server. Looks like I spared myself a world of pain. Anyways, does anyone know why some Outlook 2007 (Pro, non-volume licensed) clients have access to both their own and shared folders' Online Archive, others only to their own Online Archive, and others to none? It's goddamn infuriating.
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Feb 4, 2013 23:09
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Will Styles posted:2003 and 2007/2010 can coexist, I don't think it would be an option for 2013, but it wouldn't be necessary in that case since you wouldn't have been able to install 2013 in the first place. I know it's not very practical, but it's the cleanest way to handle things according to Microsoft. KaneTW posted:I am so glad that I made a new domain when I transitioned from our old SBS2003 server. Looks like I spared myself a world of pain. The best thing a company/organization can do right now is get rid of Legacy (2003) servers, in my opinion. 2007+ is a different beast than what 2003 was altogether and 2003 in general is just Not A Good Thing compared to 2007/2010/2013 Exchange offerings. I loving hated Powershell and how everything was handled in 2007, but since learning it I do mail/Exchange tasks hundreds of times faster than I used to be able to. Brand new domain is definitely the way to go, if I had my pick. The domains/companies I've done 2003 SBS/2003 Exchange swing migrations honestly haven't been that bad. KaneTW, what do the users and shared mailboxes have if you do a powershell command like this: code:code:I think (not at my work computer at the moment.)
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Feb 5, 2013 00:17
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How do I tell if I have public folder content that is "tainted" by 2003?
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Feb 5, 2013 02:55
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Powdered Toast Man posted:How do I tell if I have public folder content that is "tainted" by 2003? What do you mean by this exactly? Do you know if the replicas were moved to the new servers?
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Feb 5, 2013 04:24
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Will Styles posted:2003 and 2007/2010 can coexist, I don't think it would be an option for 2013 Gah, yeah I just looked into this and you're spot on there re: 2013 I still have customers coming to me to migrate to 2010 from 2003 from time to time. I wonder what the migration process is like going from 2010 to 2013, and how much more time it's going to take me to modernise customers exchange environments :/
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Feb 5, 2013 10:10
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Going from 2007 => 2010 or 2010 => 2013 isn't all that bad, in my experience, but I only have migrated our internal company to 2013 from 2010. It went smooth as hell.
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Feb 5, 2013 15:15
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Gyshall posted:What do you mean by this exactly? Do you know if the replicas were moved to the new servers? Yes, they definitely not moved because I had to force a replication recently when I created a new mailbox server. Pain in the rear end. You mentioned something earlier in the thread about 2003 public folder content so I wasn't sure if you meant that it could cause problems even if you no longer had a 2003 server in your infrastructure (which we do not).
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Feb 5, 2013 16:45
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theperminator posted:Gah, yeah I just looked into this and you're spot on there re: 2013 I recently had a customer who tried to migrate from 2003 to 2013. He couldn't move the mailboxes, so instead he installed 2007 on Server 2012 and couldn't figure out why his OWA wasn't working. Also, instead of moving his public folder replicas (or upgrading anything correctly), he just shut down the 2003 server and formatted it once the mailboxes were moved. He also tried installing 2010 on Server 2012, hosed that up, and deleted that VM. When I told him that his public folders were gone forever, his response was basically "ah well, life goes on". I appreciate his Zen approach to loving up his entire organization. His AD environment was an even worse nightmare. That Server 2012/Exchange 2007 server was also the operations master for his domain. Once I created a 2008 R2 server with Exchange 2010 and moved all his mailboxes and mailflow, he deleted the VM running 2012/2007. That's about as much experience as I have with 2013 though. I intend to set up a test domain once I can get another customer's Exchange 2010/O365 hybridization deployment working correctly.
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Feb 5, 2013 17:11
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^^^ That sounds like an absolute nightmare  Powdered Toast Man posted:Yes, they definitely not moved because I had to force a replication recently when I created a new mailbox server. Pain in the rear end. You mentioned something earlier in the thread about 2003 public folder content so I wasn't sure if you meant that it could cause problems even if you no longer had a 2003 server in your infrastructure (which we do not). I think it was me who mentioned 2003 public folder data. For that I would just assume it's not there and deal with it if it becomes a problem later. Where it could come from is when you are decommissioning a 2003 public folder store and you have to move all the replicas to another public folder store. If you replicate all of the NON_IPM_SUBTREE folders from the 2003 to the 2007/2010 public folder store then later when you try and install Exchange 2013 the install may fail due to the 2003 system public folders that are still in the org. It's not a likely scenario to run into so I would just keep going with what you're doing, but if it fails that's something to look at.
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Feb 5, 2013 17:12
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Strife posted:His AD environment was an even worse nightmare. That Server 2012/Exchange 2007 server was also the operations master for his domain. Once I created a 2008 R2 server with Exchange 2010 and moved all his mailboxes and mailflow, he deleted the VM running 2012/2007. Sounds like you're probably working in the office right next to me, we have clients that do this all the time. Or we have to clean up after companies that come in and try to do an upgrade to Exchange 2007/2010/2013 and not have any idea what the hell they're doing. Seriously, IT people, stop loving everything up all the time, although I appreciate the record business!
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Feb 5, 2013 17:34
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It's really loving aggravating how Microsoft is treating Public Folders WRT O365. Should I just create a new shared Mailbox called Public Folders? Or do I need to create a new Room Mailbox for each room calendar? And that means everyone will have to manually add it to their outlook since I don't want to grant full access. Or can I grant full access and then granularly control permissions through outlook? Please don't say sharepoint  Thanks Microsoft.
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Feb 5, 2013 18:31
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Powdered Toast Man posted:I loving HATE NETAPP SNAPMANAGER FOR EXCHANGE. When NetApp was doing one of their GoToMeeting demos of that, it kept crashing all over the place with error messages even the guy showing it had no idea what they meant. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed.
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Feb 5, 2013 19:41
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Does anyone know how the mailbox provisioning load balancer does its calculations in Exchange 2010? Here's 15 databases with 258 mailboxes migrated over from 2007 into IsExcludedFromProvisioning:$false databases:code:Maybe it's by database size? Nope. code:
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Feb 5, 2013 19:42
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There isn't any other logic than "pick random database that isn't excluded and policies allow" unfortunately. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff872148.aspx I found a script that will help in balancing databases. http://www.stevieg.org/2010/09/balancing-exchange-databases/
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Feb 5, 2013 19:58
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Well, that's pretty silly. The Exchange 2010 help says:Microsoft posted:The IsExcludedFromProvisioning parameter specifies that this database is permanently not considered by the mailbox provisioning load balancer. Not much of a load balancer, then.
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Feb 5, 2013 20:24
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Hey, Room Mailboxes are neat. 85% of my public folders are now gone. Apologies for the hissy fits I throw in here, I have no one to bounce ideas off of since I'm a 1 man shop.
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Feb 6, 2013 00:06
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