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neowolf219Flag for United States of America

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Migrating mailboxes from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003

I have seen a slew of posts about this.  My question is as follows.  

There are two ways two migrate mailboxes ... interorganizational (setup Exchange 2003 as a new organization than that of Exchange 5.5) and using the ADC with Exchange 2003 in the same organization as Exchange 5.5.  My site had no public folders.  

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.  If I install with the ADC, then I can migrate users and nothing should happen connection wise during this process?  Then, once I have migrated users, I can remove the Exchange 5.5 box.

Now, if I setup Exchange in a new organization and migrate users using Exchange Migration tool (remember, no public folders) should I not also be able to migrate users, and while the Exchange 5.5 box is still in place, nothing happens to their connection.  

My ultimate goal is little to no downtime of users mailboxes if possible.  MS recommends the ADC, but I was wondering if anyone actually had war stories related to this problem.  

Thanks  
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David Wilhoit
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I guess I should have added I am doing this on a cluster ... does this make a difference.  
Actually, I just read in a MS doc that SRS is not support in a clustered environment.  So I will have to create a new organization and then use the migration wizard to move the mailboxes.  Active Directory is already in place, so theoritally this shouldn't be an issue.  
No, you can create a stand-alone server for the first server in your environment, then create the cluster. When the migration is over, you can remove the front end server. Don't create the new org, you'll have to exmerge then, and that's just no fun :)

D
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visioneer

Exactly what Kidego said.  It's way easier to just install the new server and move the mailboxes, as I previously outlined, than to use exmerge.  Just create the server, join it to the site (cluster is irrelevant), move the mailboxes, and remove the old server.  Then like Kidego says, create your cluster with the new server.