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SBS 2000 Exchange: Moving Mailboxes

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by cwunder3 1 view

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Our company is planning a movement of exchange data from one SBS 2k Server to another 2k server. All of the mailboxes will be the same. The only change is that we have a new physical machine that we are putting in as the server. The new machine is not the same internally as the old one. What is the best strategy for moving Exchange from one server to another? The new machine has no operating system on it yet, because we aren't sure whether to put SBS or just 2K server on it before the transfer of Exchange data. Thanks for your help.

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by timwalsh

I hate to ask how you intend to do this without sounding like a licensing nazi. Your issue is not as simple as moving mailboxes from one Exchange server to another. If it were, the process would be fairly straight forward, and there are tools included within Active Directory (AD) and Exchange to do this. Your issue is one of moving mailboxes from SBS 2000 Exchange to any other location. Because of the limitions imposed on SBS, your options may be very limited.

Did you intend on installingExchange 2000 Standard on the second Win2K server? I don't think SBS will let you load components on another box. Since SBS won't allow its Exchange server to be part of a larger Exchange organization, you may or may not be able to even join a second Exchange server to an SBS Exchange site.

Did you intend to completely replace the first SBS server with the second? The limitations imposed by SBS make it almost impossible to migrate Active Directory from one SBS server to another. SBS mustbe installed as the forest-root Domain Controller (DC) and inter forest trusts are not allowed. This essentially makes migration impossible.

I think your options come to to the following:
1. Move your hard drive from your present server to thesecond server.
2. Backup you present installation to tape, install SBS on the second server, and restore (everything).
3. Clone your present hard drive to the second server.

At this point you might want to talk with Microsoft direct to see what your options are to either move your SBS install from one computer to another or migrate from an SBS AD domain to a non-SBS AD domain.

Good luck.

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