When it’s time to say goodbye to 2003…

Let’s face facts, 2010 is out, 2007 has been out, and that means that 2003 is slowly but surely fading into obscurity.  Make no mistake, we’ll see lots of 2003 in the real world for some time to come, but many of my clients are starting their migrations to the newer Exchange Server platforms.  There’s a lot of good reasons to migrate, and a lot of great native and 3rd-Party tools to help, but when you are at the point where you want to turn off the Exchange 2003 servers for good, don’t forget you need to do a few things first.

Exchange 2003 servers may seem to be alike, but the first server you installed in your environment holds special significance in the Exchange Organization.  So as you migrate users off and into the new systems, make sure you don’t simply shut down the first Exchange 2003 server and walk away.  Some of the things you need to do to that first server are critical!

If you use Public Folders, you need to replicate any folders that reside on the first Exchange server of the site. Chances are that you have already done this for your more common folders, but have a long, hard look at the PF tree and make sure that there are no folders homed only on that Exchange 2003 box.

The Exchange 2003 Offline Address Book will be homed on that first server as well.  If you are upgrading, make sure to create multiple versions of the OAB on one or more of the new servers (OAB3 OAB4, etc).  Make sure your users are then getting their OAB info from the new servers instead of the first 2003 server in the site.

Ensure that another server holds all necessary Master Roles for Exchange.  Many of these roles aren’t required for newer versions of Exchange, but it pays to do the homework to make sure.

If you use custom connectors that must continue to work in the new versions of Exchange; make sure you get them set up on your Hub/Transport and Edge servers to ensure communication continues.  SMTP is native, but others are not.

Once you step through these items (and possibly a few others like Schedule+ info which needs to be migrated, not simply moved), you can safely remove that first Exchange 2003 server in your site.  If you need to figure out which one was the first, or if you need more details, check out the KB article from Microsoft on how to go about doing this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822931

Migration is a fact of life that most of us will face in the next year or two.  Don’t get caught short because you missed one or more critical steps for that one last Exchange 2003 box.