Your company has been sitting on the same Microsoft Exchange server 5.5 for years now. You realize that there are no spam protection and that your mail system is years between any mail system on the market today. Since your organization is familiar with Microsoft products you have determined that a migration to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Standard will meet your companies needs. So what next? The best way to have a successful migration is to plan it out. You should get another server a do a migration from your old Exchange 5.5 server to the new Exchange 2003 server. The following is a plan that will help you with your migration. Remember to have a backup of everything and schedule a whole weekend. This plan works with information stores up to 200 mailboxes. If you join the new server to the existing domain you will not have to touch any desktops. Users will automatically login Monday with no problem. Exchange Migration plan for moving forward:

• Perform Due Diligence on your network via Remote Terminal Service ( Next Week)
• Identify existing components - users, groups, login variables
• Document proposed AD structure
• Project kickoff meeting (Friday)
• Install Windows Server 2003 (Friday Night)
• Install Active Directory (Friday Night)
• Configure, Patch and Connect (Friday Night)
• Review Event Log, resolve any errors (Friday Night)
• Connect AD environment to existing Windows 2000 (Friday Night)
• Identify existing printers (Saturday)
• Identify existing components in Exchange (Saturday)
• Build Exchange, configure, patch (Saturday)
• Install and configure virus software, Spam solution and Fax Software (Saturday)
• Configure OWA in DMZ (Saturday)
• Verify Installation (Saturday)
• Perform Mailbox Move (Saturday)
• Install Outlook 2003 on all desktops. (Saturday - Sunday)
• Review Event Log, resolve any errors (Sunday)
• Setup Test workstation/perform testing (Sunday)

You must be On-Site the next business day to handle any issues with the migration (Monday)



The above steps are only an estimate of work needed to be perform a successful migration. After performing the Due Diligence you will have a more definite plan. This Due Diligence will identify issues that we can resolve before the migration is performed. Of course if you do need help professional are only a phone call away.