Exchange 5.5 migration to Exchange 2000/3

[Wayne Whittle]

I am in the process of upgrading our enterprise (consisting of 4 sites) from NT to AD with Windows 2003. Regarding Exchange I want to migrate all the mailboxes from 5.5 rather than do an upgrade. However I'm a little unsure of the prerequisites for the existing 5.5 server. Both servers must be in the new AD/2003 domain but must the 5.5 server itself be upgraded from NT to 2003 as well or can I just join it to the new domain as an NT member server (if I join it as an NT member server it won't affect the AD will it - it will maintain it's own directory ?).

[Ganesh Babu]

check this out.

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Migrating_Exchange_5_5_to_2003.html

Ganesh

[Jon Finley]

On the Exchange 2000/2003 CD, is a resource tool called the "Data Migration Wizard". It will actually walk you through the process, and make it VERY easy to do.

Exchange 2000 article:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2000/library/MME55E2K.mspx

2000/2003 resource page:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/upgrade.mspx

Jon

[Scott Clark_3]

I just did a NT4 to 2003 domain migration this weekend. I didn't want the hassle of worrying about my Exchange 5.5 (nt4) server as well, so I migrated it into the 2003 domain. I had no problems.

Follow this guide for migrating your Exchange server:
http://www.swinc.com/images/exch_faq_k2.gif

After that, all you have to do is re-assign your primary accounts on each mailbox.