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Preparing for your Migration to Exchange 2007

The process of migrating to Exchange 2007 is not easy – in fact, any email migration is an inherently risky operation - but with a little research and proper planning you will soon be benefiting from all that Exchange 2007 has to offer.

Developed by Exchange consultants and developer, ENow, Inc., Mailscape has proven to a vital tool to help your migrations smoothly, and has has been used in migrating over 80,000 seats of Exchange, of which 45,000 were to Exchange 2007.

During these experiences, Mailscape helped in the following areas:

Example #1: Do you Have Minimum Source Server Requirements

Exchange 2007 requires that your Exchange 2003 servers be at SP2 (minimum) and your Exchange 2000 servers be at SP3 (minimum).

How does Mailscape help? Mailscape’s General Report provides at-a-glance data on Exchange version, server role, and service pack level for all the servers in your environment.

Refer to this brief for additional information:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125239.aspx?wt.svl=highlights

 

Example #2. Is Your Design Working?

With Exchange 2007 there's new options for ensuring availability and resilience of your Exchange service. Are your CCR nodes actually functioning? Is mail flowing between the databases? Is mail flowing externally?
Is OWA & Outlook Anywhere functioning? Is Active Sync working?

How does Mailscape help? Mailscape lets you check that every aspect of your design is working before users start to 'go live'.


Example #3. Monitoring Target Database Size

It is a common Microsoft Best Practice to limit the database size to 20-25 GB. The smaller the database is, the easier it will be to backup, restore and repair. Keeping track of how much data is being transferred into the new Exchange database during a migration is difficult, especially considering the amount of data transfer that takes place.

How does Mailscape help? Mailscape can alert the administrator well in advance of reaching a target database size – or worse – running out of disk space.

 

Example #4: Ensure that the Exchange 2007 Servers are Correctly Load Balanced

Many companies believe that the benefits of moving to a new messaging platform include reliability and better performance. This is only true if the migration is carefully monitored and the data is distributed evenly. Before beginning your migration to Exchange 2007, you must collect certain information on your current mailboxes and databases to ensure that your data is correctly balanced across the new Exchange 2007 servers during the migration.

How does Mailscape help? The Master Mailbox report shows how your Mailbox and storage needs change over time across all your Exchange servers. In addition, Mailscape provides detailed information on user mailbox sizes and number of deleted items for each Exchange 2003 database.

Refer to this brief for additional information:
http://searchsystemschannel.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid99_gci1265195,00.html

 

Example #5: Determine Message Traffic

Before beginning your migration to Exchange 2007, you must collect data on your current message traffic in order to properly size Exchange 2007’s Hub and Transport roles.

How does Mailscape help? Mailscape’s Message Tracking reports provide vital information on how much traffic each Exchange server is producing at a given point in time and on a historical trending basis:
• Total messages sent with average size and total size
• Total messages received with average size and total size
• Average number of messages sent per user per day
• Average number of messages received per user per day
• Average number of recipients per message


Example #6: Purge Inactive Mailboxes Prior to Migration

In any migration project, it is good practice to purge inactive mailboxes from the source server to ensure they are not unnecessarily migrated to the new target server.

How does Mailscape help? Mailscape’s Locked-out Mailbox report makes it easy to identify inactive mailboxes so they can be exmerged from the system before you begin your migration to Exchange 2007.


Example #7: Ensure Your New Platform is Operating at Optimal Levels

Any time a new email system is introduced, it takes a while to work out the ‘kinks’. Mailscape can be used to monitor the following aspects of your new environment:

-Outbound and Inbound Mail flow
-Processor and Memory Utilization
-Is the new system being overloaded with too much data?
-Service Monitoring
-Are all necessary services started or stopped? For example, it is common to stop all antivirus solutions during a migration to ensure that data is transferred correctly. The administrator needs to be sure that all correct services are in the proper state. Mailscape can help in this area by monitoring the appropriate services.