From Exchange 5.5 to 2003 in a single bound

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I have talked to several people in the past few weeks who have told me that their organizations are going to move from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000. When I asked them why they're implementing Exchange 2000 rather than Exchange 2003, the answer I got every time was, "you can't upgrade from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003."

This is only partially true. There is a way that you can upgrade from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 without having to buy a copy of Exchange 2000. The method is a little more difficult than an Exchange 2000 upgrade, but I believe it is worthwhile. Exchange 2003 has more features than Exchange 2000 and also contains corrections to many of the bugs and security issues in Exchange 2000.

In this article, I explain what you need to do to upgrade from Exchange 5.5 directly to Exchange 2003.

Preparing Windows

In order to run Exchange 2003, at least one domain controller must be running Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or higher or Windows Server 2003. Any servers that will be running Exchange 2003 must have the same.

Preparing Exchange 5.5

Before you even think about an upgrade, you need to take some time and prepare your Exchange organization:

Setting up a temporary server

I understand that companies have limited budgets and that you probably don't want the expense of adding additional Exchange servers to your organization. But you can't just install Exchange 2003 on top of Exchange 5.5.

The easiest way of accomplishing the up

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grade is to set up an Exchange 2003 server, and then move your mailboxes and public folders to it. Before you decide that this approach is too expensive, let me explain how you can do this on a budget.

Rather than going out and spending $30,000 on a new server, buy a PC that has enough hard drive space to store your Exchange information store. You can set this PC up as a temporary server and then use it as a workstation later on. You don't have to worry about software licenses for this temporary server either. Microsoft allows you to download 90-day trial versions of Exchange Server and Windows Server.

The upgrade

The actual migration process is pretty simple:

If you have any Windows NT backup domain controllers in your organization, you might also consider upgrading them to Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 so that you can set Windows to native mode as well. This not only gives you additional functionality, it also eliminates the need to support legacy LanMan replication.

Review

Conclusion

Even though an upgrade to Exchange 2000 is easier to perform, I honestly believe that migrating from Exchange 5.5 directly to Exchange 2003 is the better upgrade path.

About the author: Brien M. Posey, MCSE, is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with Windows 2000 Server and IIS. Brien has served as CIO for a nationwide chain of hospitals and was once in charge of IT security for Fort Knox. As a freelance technical writer he has written for Microsoft, CNET, ZDNet, TechTarget, MSD2D, Relevant Technologies and other technology companies. You can visit Brien's personal Web site at http://www.brienposey.com.