50-75 User Exchange 2003 Environment to Exch 2010 - recommendations
Greetings to all! My current environment is Exchange 2K3 running on a box with 1 4x Opteron processor and 16GB of RAM, a couple 2K3 DC's, one serving as Schema Master, the other as GC. Forest is at 2K3 level. We have a Barracuda spam firewall as the SMTP smart host. A separate box hosts a Blackberry Enterprise Server. Our office has 41 users, possibly over 50 by mid-2010. All machines are running Outlook '07. We are part of a larger corporation but maintain a seprate network and domain because of contractual issues, we do have an Exchange connector to their mail gateway over a VPN tunnel that routes all mail to/from their domains.
For the future environment, I have 2 VMWare ESXi hypervisors up and running, each with 16GB of RAM and 1.9 TB of storage (Dell PE1950's and a split MD1000 array). There are 8 processor cores available on each host. A 3rd ESXi host will be available soon.
The plan is to bring up one 64-bit DC and the Exchange server on one host box, as well as the BES and one or 2 other utility servers. On the other host will be the other DC and our test environment and a few other utility servers.
Right now my delays are: waiting for RIM to support Exch 2010 for the BES and waiting for VMWare to support server 2008 R2 as a virtual machine. I can proceed with server 2008 R1, if it looks like it will be awhile for VMWare to implement support for R2 on ESXi.
What I would like is, after reading through Technet and a few other publications, some expert opinion on the best way to proceed. My thoughts were to install the 2010 server and the 2K8 DC's first, promote the DC's to Schema Master and GC, migrate a few non-Blackberry accounts for starters and begin testing. Once BES is supported, set that up and migrate a few test Blackberry users. Once it all looks good, then migrate the remaining users and remove the 2K3 server and the 2K3 DC's.
Areas of concern are (in no particular order):
1) Support: the BES server, how long will RIM take to support 2010? I have not received an answer from their support. Has anyone heard any dates? ANyone have any information on VMWare and when they will update ESXi to include support for 2K8 R2?
2) The virtual environment - is this adequate? Its what we could afford, but I might be able to finagle more hardware for early next year.
3) The user migration and potential impact.
4) Should I have one hardware DC? I have budget for an additional Dell 1950 if need be.
5) We also have a reporting requirement to: a) provide random samplings every quarter of all mail traffic between our office and our corporate (as I mentioned earlier, they are a separate foriegn entity), this traffic can easily be differentiated by mail domain or by the connector it flows through and b) create a "dirty word" list and be able to review any mail traffic containing those terms. We were looking to purchase 3rd party software for this, but it seems like I may be able to do it all natively.
6) PST files - there are many lying around, both from former employees and current. As we all know, they are an accident waiting to happen. I would like to import them and move them to lower cost storage.
7) Learning Curve - looks like 2010 is all Powershell command line based, so I will need to bone up on the command set, can anyone recommend a good reference book?
8) The Barracuda Spam Filter - will there be any issues incorporating this with 2010?
9) The order of the implementation. a) set up the 2K8 DC b) install the OS and Exchange c) move non-BB accounts and test d) set up new BB server once supported e) move some BB users and test f) start migrating users once the tests are successful.
10) Lower-cost storage - can this be a NAS box (thinking FreeNAS) or does it have to be directly attached to the Exchange server or on a SAN?
11) I am thinking of moving away from Symantec Backup Exec, what are the thoughts on Microsoft Data Protection Manager and Exchange 2010/Active Directory 2008? Or other backup software that might be good to look at?
Any suggestions or help would be appreciated, I am a one-man shop and time for resaerch has become very limited.
All Replies
- Hi Master_Yoda,
You ask a lot of really good questions. I could probably comment on all of them, but I'll limit my responses to the virutualization specific questions. I recently virtualized Exchange when I made the transition from 2003 to 2007. Since the I/O is so much better in 2010, it bodes very well to virtualization. Read my posting at: http://itforme.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/exchange-2007-better-late-than-never/ describing my experiences.
You will probably run into very passionate responses with regards to virtualizing DC's. The fact is that regardless of it being physical or virtual, you run into the same issues if you need to restore them. So you might as well go the VM route. I did, and I have absolutely no regrets.
Leave NAS boxes for just depot locations for ISO's and such. You want to create a robust system that will allow you to sleep at night. Some ESX servers connected to a SAN is the way to go. Please let me know if you'd like me to provide you with further information
Holy moly. Remove 12 GB of memory from that box and put it to good use elsewhere. :) You probably don't see it since you are only dealing with 75 users, but no Exchange 2003 server should have more than 4GB of physical memory in it. Windows still has to allocate memory to plan for addressing that extra memory even if you aren't using it. You can either pull it out or utilize one of two boot.ini switches; BURNMEMORY in boot.ini to bring it back to 4GB (so you'd do BURNMEMORY=12288 in Boot.ini), or MAXMEM=4096 also in boot.ini but not both at once.My current environment is Exchange 2K3 running on a box with 1 4x Opteron processor and 16GB of RAM
Brian Day, Overall Exchange & AD Geek
MCSA 2000/2003, CCNA
MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Configuration
LMNOP- You'll have to keep an eye on RIM. Their webpage says 30 days after general availability, but I highly doubt we'll be seeing that. There are a lot of us waiting for them. :)
- Tough to say without seeing the final design.
- Since you currently have Exchange 2003 you cannot do online mailbox moves so users will have to exit Outlook while the mailbox is moved (or just do them overnight).
- There are camps that always like 1 physical DC and other camps that don't care. It's a perosnal preference for you to decide.
- Hub Transport rules can easily do your dirty word stuff.
- Admins can import them.
- There aren't any deep Exchange 2010 books out yet that I know of, but any of the good Exchange 2007 (preferably SP2) books will get you started in the right direction.
- There shouldn't be any issue at all, all you're doing it passing mail from the Barracuda to the SMTP receive connector of Exchange
- Do you use OWA, ActiveSync, Outlook Anywhere? If you can't move everyone at once due to limitations like RIM then you'll have to read up on the coexistence portion of migrating from Exchange 2003 to 2010.
- Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or direct attach. You cannot use a NAS that is accessed via SMB.
- I love DPM. My last experience with Backup Exec left a nasty taste in my mouth. You will have to wait for DPMv3 to be released to get Exchange 2010 support (or use the public beta if you can accept the risk).
Brian Day, Overall Exchange & AD Geek
MCSA 2000/2003, CCNA
MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Configuration
LMNOP- Thanks for your post, and the link to your blog as well. We have very similar environments and I appreciate your insight.
- I inherited that server as-is, so I'm not going to make any changes to it, as it's going to be used for target practice one 2010 is up. But thanks for the suggestion! :)
- Thanks for all the responses! Your insight is very helpful. I did get the VMWare ESXi update installed, so my virtual environment will support 2K8R2. I have an open support ticket with RIM, they're supposed to let me know. I plan to move ahead with my current hardware and once the 2010 budget dollars are available, get a real SAN and use the SCSI array for DPM or whatever backup solution I go with.
Mike
