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Public Folder Migration SBS 2003 to SBS 2008

hi,

i have now completed the sbs 2008 migration wizard apart from the final stage of removing the old  sbs 2003 server. However the public folders have yet to move fully across to the new SBS 2008 server. They have created the replica folders on the SBS2008 machine and certain folders contain data but not all of them and its been about a week now since i initiated the move.

We have 2 folders which are about 150mb but nothing to huge so i am worried that the process has simply ground to a halt but i do not know how to tell. So i have a few questions:

1. How can i see what stage its at?
2. What can i do to move this data across if it has stopped?
3. Can i copy cached versions from users favourites in outlook onto the new public folders?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Guy
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Brian Harrington
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Check out the SBS blog's article on this.  It was helpful in our migration:
http://blogs.technet.com/11/archive/2009/01/28/unable-to-migrate-public-folders-from-sbs-2003-to-sbs-2008-or-ebs.aspx
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Hi,

Thanks for the article, i had a look over it and the first point about annoymous access we had set up correctly however the second about the changes to the SMTP connector i can not complete as the SMTP Connector was deleted as part of the migration guidelines.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Guy
Hi,

Is there a way to view the public folders from the source Exchange 2003 machine in Outlook on a workstation during the migration?

If so i'm thinking i'll just back them up to a PST file and then complete the migration and restore the public folders on the Exchange 2007 server from the PST files.

Guy
Yeah, thats a valid way of doing it.  A friend of mine had to do that.  But here's what you do.  Open outlook, go to the public folders, COPY the folders to the users mailbox.  Switch over to 2007 and copy back.
Yes i was able to do that for any public folders that had been added to the users favourites as it seems to cache them on the workstation. However a number of them are not in anyones favourites and therefore only viewable under the 'All Public Folder' list but this shows them from the Exchange 2007 store not the old Exchange 2003 store i want to copy them from.
Make sure the replicas are on your Exchange 2003 box.  And see if you can stop the Public Folder store on 2007.
I can dismount the public folder in Exchange 2007 but i can not have more than 1 public folder in exchange. Could i therefore dismount the current public folder and copy the edb file to another location. Then i could rename the old exchange 2003 public folder edb file to the name of the new exchange 2007 file and place it in the correct directory and mount the public folder? this sounds somewhat unlikely to me as i do not what the log files will think of this or whether the old edb file is even compatable...
As another option i think it may be safer for me to simply complete the migration process and demote the old server which will mean the exchange 2003 replicas will be unaccessable so the process of transfering the data will end. Then i can set up the old machine on a seperate network with a single workstation and restore the system data from a back up. From what i understand this should bring it back to the state it was in prior to migration, allow the workstation to connect to the domain open outlook and i hope see all the old public folder stores which can then be backed up to PST and moved to the new Exchnage 2007 stores manually.

Would this be correct?

If so what would others recommend: The option in the previous post (if that even is an option), this option above or something else?

Regards,

Guy
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We had an issue with a client this weekend whereby during the migration from SBS2003 to SBS 2008 the migration wizard incorrectly assigned a connector between the OWA server and the new SBS 2008....this caused us all manner of issues with the PF replication.  First we had to work out that this was incorrect then had to fix it.
Ended up deleting teh default connector created during the migration.  Uninstalled exchange from the OWA server as it was becoming defunct anyway...this removed the server from teh routing group.  Created a new routing connector between the old and new SBS and voila it started replicating.