Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition (part 1)

 Microsoft has made the Exchange 2013 transition from Exchange 2010 a bit easier than it was in the past. This article should help to explain the process. Prerequisites Before you begin with this endeavor: Make sure that your Exchange 2010 infrastructure has been patched to Exchange Service Pack 3, this includes Edge transport servers, Client Access Servers, Hub Transport Servers and Mailbox Servers. This service pack is required for the coexistence period with Exchange 2013 as noted in the Exchange Team’s Blog. Say goodbye to Exchange 2003. You can not have Exchange 2003 in your organization any longer. Check your DNS Server and Event logs for errors. It’s unlikely that you had DNS errors before an upgrade that you didn’t already know about but it’s certainly worth taking a look just to check. A few minutes of discovery is well worth not having hours of troubleshooting afterwards. Plan your Exchange 2013 infrastructure. This article only explains the transition steps, but you should research and understand what your infrastructure should look like before you start a migration. Do you have multiple sites that need High Availability? Do you need multiple Exchange servers in a Database Availability Group? Do you need to separate your Client Access Server from your Mailbox Server for performance or management reasons, or can you put them on the same box? How many different Mailbox databases should you have? These are important design considerations. Licensing There are two flavors of Exchange 2013. Standard allows for up to five mailbox databases, and Enterprise allows for up to 50. ...

April 29, 2013 · 5 min · eshanks

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition (part 2)

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 1 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 3 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 4 I assume you’ve reached this page because you finished ready part 1 and are now ready to dive into your newly installed Exchange 2013 server. ...

April 29, 2013 · 3 min · eshanks

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition (part 3)

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 1 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 2 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 4 Migrate Mailboxes You’re ready to migrate your mailboxes! Go to the Recipient link, mailbox category and choose the mailbox(es) you want to migrate. I’ll be migrating [email protected] to the new servers. Click “To another database” action on the lower right hand side of the menu. ...

April 29, 2013 · 2 min · eshanks

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition (part 4)

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition Part 1 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition Part 2 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition Part 3 I want to take a second to explain that this series of posts on how to migrate to Exchange 2013 didn’t come without it’s share of difficulties. ...

April 29, 2013 · 2 min · eshanks

Exchange Split Brain ... On Purpose?

I was recently tasked with performing a company wide disaster recovery test. The test had the normal goals with a standard recovery time objective, and recover point objectives. Unfortunately, the test needed to be performed during the middle of a production day, and not affect production. Under normal circumstances we could assume that our production servers were disabled or destroyed in some manner and we could power up our DR servers and continue the business. During this test however we needed to make sure that both networks could run at the same time. ...

February 27, 2012 · 4 min · eshanks