Scenario
An Exchange upgrade from Exchange 2003 Standard to
Exchange 2010 Standard, also needing to account for Symantec Enterprise Vault
archives connected to the Exchange 2003 server, with the intention to migrate
the Enterprise Vault archives to Exchange 2010 Archive mailboxes. The version
of Symantec Enterprise Vault was 7.5 and the support had lapsed so upgrading
this was not an option – version 9.0 or above would have been required for
Exchange 2010 (the latest version of EV is 10.0.2.)
Important Note: The
Exchange 2010 Archive mailbox feature requires Exchange 2010 Enterprise CALs!
Note: An easier
solution might have been to upgrade the Symantec Enterprise Vault, this would
not require the Exchange 2010 Enterprise CALs, and make the migration a lot
quicker (no need to re-inject the archives back into Exchange 2003, then have
to migrate a potentially much larger mailbox to Exchange 2010, and finally –
with Exchange 2010 Enterprise CALs – configure the archive mailboxes at the
other end.)
Migration Steps
1) Pause the
following tasks from the Enterprise Vault Administration Console (VAC), and
Console Root > Enterprise Vault > Directory on SERVER > EVSITE >
Enterprise Vault Servers > EVSERVER:
Exchange Mailbox
Archiving Task
Exchange
Provisioning Task
Image: EV 7.5 >
Tasks
2) Right-click the Archives folder and choose Export…
Image: EV 7.5 >
Archives > Export…
3) Follow through the Export Archive wizard, choosing to ‘Export Archives to their original mailboxes’
Image: Export
Archives to their original mailboxes
Note: For archives
that no longer link to an active mailbox, if these archives are still required
then export to PST instead.
4) When the Export to the original mailboxes is complete,
simply right-click exported archive(s) in the Archives > Exchange Mailbox
folder and choose delete
5) When all the archives have been re-injected back into
Exchange 2003 we can decommission the Symantec Enterprise Vault server (can first delete the Exchange 2003 server
from the VAC - Targets > Exchange > DOMAIN > Exchange Server)
6) The migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 is a
straightforward Move Request from the Exchange 2010 EMC or EMS.
7) Final step would be configuring the Archive Mailboxes
in Exchange 2010.
Note: Another
option would be to just Export to PST all the mailboxes then re-import the PST,
but re-injecting into Exchange is potentially quicker (only the re-inject operation
and the Archive Policy will sort out the rest) and also avoids any compatibility
issues with re-importing Exchange 2003 PSTs into Exchange 2010.
Things to Consider
1) Pausing the Mailbox Archiving Task will potentially
cause the Exchange 2003 mailbox database to start growing, be sure there is
plenty of free space, and if you have Exchange 2003 Standard, watch out for the
75GB limit in Exchange 2003 SP2 (after
applying the registry fix to up the limit from the default of 18GB with SP2.)
2) Re-injecting archives back into Exchange will
potentially cause the Exchange 2003 mailbox database to start growing. Also, it
will generate a lot of transaction logs.
3) Regards handling transaction logs, the preferred
method is to take regular backups to keep the transaction logs down, if this is
not an option then circular logging will need to be enabled on the Mailbox Store.
4) Migrating mailboxes to Exchange 2010 will generate
transaction logs on the Exchange 2010 server – again recommend regular backups
to keep the logs down. It is important to remember that when you move a mailbox
from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, the white space is only made available in
the Exchange 2003 server database after the database maintenance task runs.
5) If the Exchange 2003 Standard 75GB database limit is
too much of a problem, it can be upgraded to Exchange 2003 Enterprise!
“An (Exchange 2003
Standard) mailbox database will dismount every morning at 5:00 when the 75GB
limit has been reached. As a temporary fix, before the migration to a new
server, create a scheduled task to run every day at 05:30 that re-mounts the
database.”
For a greater than 24 hour window between dismounts:
“… if the following
value in the registry is set to one hour behind the current dismount time, it
will be almost 48 hours before the next dismount …
To change the time,
create a DWORD registry key called "Database
Size Check Start Time in Hours From Midnight" in the following
location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\\Private-GUID
Then, specify a
decimal value of 1-24 in the value datafield, where 1 is equal to 01:00 or 1 AM
and so on. A dismount and remount of the database is required for this change
to be active.”
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