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Upgrading from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013 - configure mailbox settings but not move mailbox data?

I currently have an Exchange 2007 server that is running extremely slow, and I'm looking into setting up a new Exchange 2013 server on better hardware.

Currently, a move of a mailbox on the 2007 server can take 12+ hours for a 500 meg mailbox. As such, I'm thinking I may not want to move mailboxes from 2007 to 2013 (perhaps move some, but not all). However, I'd like to have an easy way to create all the accounts on the new server, then perhaps export from the .ost file to a .pst, and import this data into the new server.

I haven't done an Exchange upgrade before, so I'm wondering if something like this is possible, perhaps with Powershell? (My main goal is to avoid moving mailboxes for fear of long duration, but also try and get up as quickly as possible.)

Thanks.

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Adam Farage

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Zacharia Kurian

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ruhkus

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Thanks for the feedback. You're right the disk I/O is horribly bad with the latency numbers significantly high. I opened up a support request with Microsoft and they ran ExPerfWiz as well. Recommended solution by MS was to contact the hardware vendor to resolve the disk issues. However, given that the server is 8+ years old and has all the Exchange roles (physical server), I wasn't sure how successful going this route would be. I tried to push MS to see if it's really just one particular storage group causing the issues (since 450 gigs with most of our mailboxes), but they stuck with the whole disk I/O stance.

So yeah, regarding disk I/O as the elephant in the room, what is the best way to get past this issue, especially when dealing with 600+ gigs of data? (To clarify as well, the moves I've done to date have been within 2007, but yes, it's not unusual for these moves to take 12+ hours for the few I've done so far.)

Zacharia Kurian

Have you ever thought of virtualization, using VMware? If you do not have budget constrains, I would suggest you to get a storage with Fiber channels + a strong mid range server and Vmware licenses. Think of P2V your current exchange.

Make sure that you do have a proper backup of your current exchange box, make a recovery plan ASAP, with all the available sources and time.