Upgrading Exchange, anything special I shoud be doing?

I don't think so...When migrating from EX03 to EX07 (I will be doing this myself shortly), you're going to be running Exchange in a mixed environment...meaning you'll still have your EX03 servers, and in addition, new EX07 servers. The EX07 servers will be running in a certain role...whichever you pick during your deployment.

As for Extender, those EX03 servers will have their own OWA support still in place, running as usual. What you'll want to pay attention to is your EX07 mailbox servers and what they have loaded onto them at that point, a journaling mailbox-enabled user, etc.

But from the EX07 get-go, there won't be anything you truly have to worry about initially. That's the best I can tell anyways. I could be completely off base here.

*edit* I did read some of the 1147 documentation, specifically the Release Notes and it does talk about the new way to deal with the forms that EX uses for showing the status of the messages (shortcut, regular, etc). You can no longer publish the forms at the organization level...you have to push them to each client machine. That's craptastic. But if your recipients are still on their EX03 mailboxes, you should be okay. It's when you start to push them onto EX07 mailbox servers is when the fun starts.

*edit2* I don't think you can upgrade an EX03 system to EX07 anyway as EX07 is x64 only. But in talking with one of Microsoft's exchange support team personnel, they expressed that running in a mixed environment is the only real way to go....migrating mailboxes from EX03 to an EX07 server after you get the "frontend" server roles worked out.

Message was edited by:
Ytsejamer1

Hello,

I am not sure what method are you going to use for migrating from 2003 to 2007. Also I am not sure if you will be having mixed environment after migration. If you will have mixed environment I would like you to make sure that you are running EX 4.81.1147 patch kit on EX server due to an defect found earlier on.

There are some considerations that you need to be aware of, those are discussed in the release notes of 4.81.1147 kit. When you will download this kit there will be one release notes PDF file just on the root of extracted folder strcuture please have a look at that, the one inside the documentation folder might not be the latest one.

Thanks,
Rajan

My response might be a little late, but I thought I'd at least post my experiences to help future migrators that come across this thread. I'm currently going through the migration process myself, but have completed most of the steps.

Yes - there are things you need to pay attention too. First of all, EMC provides little to no documentation on how to do a step-by-step migration from an existing Exchange 2003 environment to an Exchange 2007 environment, not even in the most general sense. I've read the Release Notes document for 4.81.1147. It takes about setting some things up for Exchange 2007, but does not cover a "best practice" for keeping EmailXtender services running while migrating between 2003 to 2007, which is what many people are asking about.

Also, to clarify on other Exchange 2007 deployment comments, you do not upgrade an Exchange 2003 server to 2007. There is no upgrade path. You can only MIGRATE from Exchange 2003 to 2007. This means you setup a new Exchange 2007 server to temporarily coincide with your existing Exchange 2003 servers. It's actually pretty easy, is well documented from several sources on the internet, and the Exchange 2007 setup does most of the work to "bring itself" into your exisiting Exchange environment.

My environment consists of:

- (1) Exchange 2003 server
- (1) EmailXtender server running 4.81.1147
- (1) Exchange 2007 server

Following Microsoft's guides, setup your Exchange 2007 to coincide with your existing Exchange 2003 server. Setup a test mailbox on Exhange 2007 or migrate your own account over using the Exchange 2007 mailbox migration tool. Test your email flow between mailboxes on 03 and 07 as well as to and from the internet.

Create a new account/mailbox on Exchange 2007. Call it EXADMIN07 or similar to easily identify it. Open the Exchange Management Shell and run the following two commands to give it RECEIVE AS and SEND AS permissions:

Add-ADPermission -identity (get-mailboxserver -identity "Exchange 2007 Server Name" | select-object).DistinguishedName -user "DomainName\exadmin07" -ExtendedRights Receive-As

Add-ADPermission -identity (get-mailboxserver -identity "Exchange 2007 Server Name" | select-object).DistinguishedName -user "DomainName\exadmin07" -ExtendedRights Send-As

In the above two commands, replace "Exchange 2007 Server Name" with your actual server name. Be sure to leave the quotes. For "DomainName\exadmin07" you can specify just the username of the new exadmin account (exadmin07) if you only have one domain. Again, leave the quotes.

As a side note, according to the installation guide, on page 6-12 it suggests giving the EX account full access by running the following command:

add-mailboxpermission "mailbox-name" -user "EX-account" -accessrights fullaccess

This works too, but I didn't find it necessary.


Next, we need to give the original EXADMIN account (whose mailbox is probably stored on the Exchange 2003 server) the same permissions on the Exchange 2007 server. Therefore, run the following two commands from the Exchange 2007 Management Shell:

Add-ADPermission -identity (get-mailboxserver -identity "Exchange 2007 Server Name" | select-object).DistinguishedName -user "DomainName\exadmin" -ExtendedRights Receive-As

Add-ADPermission -identity (get-mailboxserver -identity "Exchange 2007 Server Name" | select-object).DistinguishedName -user "DomainName\exadmin" -ExtendedRights Send-As

The above two commands assume the EX account on the Exchange 2003 server is called exadmin.


Next we need to start journaling Exchange 2007 email:

Open the Exchange Management Console.
Navigate to Server Configuration -> Mailbox
Right-click your main Exchange 2007 mailbox database and choose Properties
Check the box next to "Journal Recipient"
Click the Browse button and add the EXADMIN07 account.
Click Ok.


Now, go to the EmailExtender server and add the new mailbox to pull journaled mail from:

Open EmailExtender Administrator.
Login.
Open the server tree in the left pane.
Right-click "EmailVault" and choose Properties.
Click the Email Connection Mailboxes tab.
Click the "Add Exchange Mailbox" button at the bottom.
Browse for the EXADMIN07 mailbox and click Ok.
Click Ok on the warning that you need to activate changes.
Click Options -> Activate Changes.
Click Yes on the warning that it will disrupt ongoing searches.


I have Outlook 2003 installed on my EmailXtender server. I configured the mail profile to monitor the EXADMIN07 inbox along side the EXADMIN inbox. This way you can watch email being journaled by both Exchange servers and watch email being pulled correctly from both mailboxes too.

Open Outlook on the EmailXtender server.
Click Tools - Email Accounts
Click Next.
Click Change to edit the Exchange Server settings
Click More Settings
Click the Advanced tab
Click Add
Type EXADMIN07 as the mailbox name
Make sure you are NOT using Exchange cached mode (the checkbox should not be checked)
Click OK
Click Next
Click Finish.
Scroll down on the left in Outlook and you should be able to open the plus sign next to "Mailbox - exadmin07" and view the inbox.

Watch both inboxes. Send a few test messages to and from a mailbox on the Exchange 2007 server. Make sure they appear in the inbox using Outlook on the EmailXtender server. What a few moments and they should disappear as EmailXtender collects the messages. If they don't disappear after a minute or so, either stop and restart the EmailXtender services or reboot the EmailXtender server.

After all mailboxes are migrated to the Exchange 2007 server and Exchange 2003 has been properly decommissioned and uninstalled (as per Microsoft documention), you can delete the exadmin account and remove it from the list of monitored mailboxes in EmailXtender Administrator.

I'm up to the point now of trying to figure out how to properly deploy the ExShortcutPost.oft and ExShortcut.oft Outlook form templates to my Outlook clients so that shortcutted email attachments work properly. Right now they don't because Exchange 2007 doesn't use public folder templates like things were setup in the Exchange 2003 environment. So, each machine needs these OFT files physically installed. Again EMC's documentation is poor in this area. They just say "Push out and publish the OFT files to the Personal Forms Library on each Outlook client", but they don't actually explain how to do this.

Lastly OWA shortcut support will be an issue in Exchange 2007. The installation manual says "Not available in this release" (section 6-34), yet casual phone conversations with EMC tech support says it is. I don't know what to believe.

I really wish EMC would take a few moments to pull together a document describing some of the migration scenarios and how to do them. After all, it's their properietary software on only they know how it works. Microsoft has good documentation on how to migrate from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007, so why can't EMC do the same with EmailXtender?

I'll post back more comments as I figure out the rest of the OFT and OWA stuff, but I'd appreciate any help too.

Hello,

Yes there is no white paper which specificly discusses about Exchange migration but there is information in the EX release notes that discusses about exchange 2007.

You mentioned about OWA shortcuts in Exchange 2007, it is supported and works well with Exchange 2007 SP1.

The release notes you want to go through are the ones that are part of the root folder when you extract install kit for EX e.g. "EmailXtender 4.81 Patch 1147 Release Notes.pdf".

Also EMC Professional Services group is usually the group who gets reffered for such jobs to make sure your transition is smooth and you will have someone available to help you. Without a doubt this service comes on a charge.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,
Rajan

Here are the rest of the steps I came up with to complete the installation of OWA support in Exchange 2007 as well as publishing the correct FDM shortcut forms to all of the Outlook clients...

We need to install local copies of EXShortcut forms in Outlook on all client machines

In section 6-34 of the EmailXtender installation guide it says to "Push out and publish the .oft files to the Personal Forms Library on each Outlook client". However, per EMC tech support, you should instead "share and install" the equivalent .FDM forms instead. I had not luck working with OFT files in my environment.

On your EmailXtender server, find the ¿Program Files\OTG\EmailXtender\Exchange Forms¿ folder and take a look at the contents. There you will find FDM and OFT forms. Make note of which FDM forms you need. You will at least need ExShortcut.fdm. If you are shortcutting tasks, notes, and meeting requests you will need to install the associated FDM files as well.

To install the forms, first share the ¿Program Files\OTG\EmailXtender\Exchange Forms¿ folder with read-only access for everyone.
On an Outlook client, click on the Tools menu and navigate to Options -> Other -> Advanced Options -> Custom Forms -> Manage Forms
Click on the Install button.
Click in the box next to "File name:" and type "\\emailxtender_server_name\Exchange Forms"
Click the drop-down menu next to "Files of type" and change it to "Form Message (*.fdm)". You should now see all the FDM forms.
Click a form name and then click Open.
Click on OK for the form properties.
Repeat these steps until all forms you need for your environment are installed. Not all are necessary.
Click Close.
Click OK three times to close all of the dialog boxes.



Next we need to install Exchange 2007 OWA shortcut support

From the Exchange 2007 server run ExOWA2007Setup.exe. This file is found in the "EMC EmailXtender 4.81.1147\Setup\Windows" folder after extracting the downloaded setup package.

When the setup program asks, be sure to type credentials using the FQDN such as "domainname.local\administrator" and the password (no quotes). Do NOT just use the username, it will fail. If the Exchange 2007 EX account has administrator priveleges on the Exchange server, use that account. Otherwise use an account that has local administrator priveleges to at least get the software installed.

Open Administrative Tools -> Component Services
Navigate to Component Services -> Computers -> My Computer -> COM+ Applications
Right-click EMC EmailXtender for OWA 2007 and click Properties
Click the Identity tab
Change the user (if necessary) to the EXADMIN07 account. Be sure to retype the passwords too. Click OK.

If you changed the username in the previous step we need to reset some components to activate the new credentials. Otherwise skip these last steps.

Navigate to Component Services -> Computers -> My Computer -> COM+ Applications -> EMC EmailXtender for OWA 2007 -> Components

Right-click on each of the following components and disable them. Then go back to each one and enable them:

ExOwaShortcut.CoExOwaShortcut.1
ExOwaShortcut.CoExOwaShortcut2.1
ExOwaShortcut.CoExOWAUtils.1

Close component services

Test shortcut support by using OWA and try opening a few emails that have shortcut attachments.


After all mailboxes are migrated to the Exchange 2007 server and Exchange 2003 has been properly decommissioned and uninstalled (as per Microsoft documention), you can delete the exadmin account and remove it from the list of monitored

mailboxes in EmailXtender Administrator.

A good tuturial on how to remove the last Exchange 2003 server can be found here:

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/migration-deployment/removing-last-exchange-2003-server-exchange-2007-part1.html