If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:
- Removing The Last Exchange 2003 Server From Exchange 2007 (Part 1)
- Removing The Last Exchange 2003 Server From Exchange 2007 (Part 3)
- Removing The Last Exchange 2003 Server From Exchange 2007 (Part 4)
Introduction
In part one of this four-part article, we started the process of allowing the Exchange 2003 server to be removed by creating a new Send Connector on the Exchange 2007 server so that all outbound Internet email can be processed by Exchange 2007 rather than Exchange 2003. In part two of this article, we’ll look at some basic inbound Internet email considerations and then move swiftly on to the process of moving public folders to the new Exchange 2007 server, as well as ensuring that the Offline Address Book generation server is specified as the Exchange 2007 server.
Inbound Internet Email
The steps listed in part one of this article take care of outbound Internet email from your Exchange 2007 organization. For inbound Internet email, I’m making the assumption in the lab environment that the Exchange 2007 Edge Server role hasn’t been deployed and that you are using a 3rd party SMTP hygiene product to filter email before it is sent to your users. You’d obviously need to ensure that any smart host that processes inbound Internet email for your Exchange 2007 organization is configured to send these messages to the Exchange 2007 server and not the Exchange 2003 server. Specifically, the smart host sends messages to the Hub Transport server role. Be aware, though, that the default SMTP Receive Connector configured on an Exchange 2007 Hub Transport server does not allow anonymous connections by default which is required to accept Internet email in the case where no Edge Transport server is deployed. Note that the process is slightly different when the Edge Transport server role is used.
To modify the properties of your default receive connector on your Hub Transport server, do the following:
- Run the Exchange Management Console, navigate to Server Configuration and then click the Hub Transport object. In the result pane, there is only the Receive Connectors tab displayed which shows a list of receive connectors configured on this Hub Transport server.
- Bring up the properties of the default Receive Connector, in my case called Default E2K7, and go to the Permission Groups tab.
- On the Permission Groups tab, select the Anonymous users check box and then click OK to close the window and accept the configuration. This configuration is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Default Receive Connector Anonymous Permissions
Public Folders
Although public folders are de-emphasized in Exchange 2007, they are still very much part of the product and there’s a fair chance that you are still using them at the moment within your Exchange infrastructure. Obviously you are going to need to migrate the data contained within the public folders over to Exchange 2007 and effectively the process is the same as if you were migrating the public folders to a different Exchange 2003 server.
Moving public folders is essentially a two-step process. The first step is to ensure that a replica of the public folder exists on the Exchange 2007 server whilst the second step is to remove the replica from the Exchange 2003 server. Fortunately, Microsoft has made the whole process really easy with two main options for us to use. First, there’s the Move All Replicas option in Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2, and second there’s the MoveAllReplicas.ps1 script provided with Exchange 2007. Let’s look at both options.
Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 introduced a rather handy menu option that you will find on the properties of the Exchange 2003 public folder store. In Exchange System Manager running on your Exchange 2003 server, navigate down the hierarchy and locate the Exchange 2003 server. Expanding the server object, continue to navigate down underneath the relevant storage group object until you find the public folder database. Here, you can right-click the public folder database and you’ll see the Move All Replicas option as shown in Figure 7 below.
Figure 7: Move All Replicas Menu Option
This menu option will automatically move all public folders that are hosted on this public folder database to an alternative public folder database of your choice. Before we do that though, let’s confirm how many public folders we need to move. To do this, continue to expand the public folder database object in Exchange System Manager until you see the Public Folder Instances object. Selecting the Public Folder Instances object will show the instances of public folders that occur on this particular public folder database and you can see from Figure 8 that we have a small number of public folders to deal with. This includes both user public folders and additionally system public folders such as the Schedule+ Free/Busy folder.
Figure 8: Public Folder Instances
The goal with the migration of the public folders to the Exchange 2007 server is to end up with a Public Folder Instances object on Exchange 2003 that shows zero entries in the list, which can be accomplished via the Move All Replicas menu option for this example. However, the main thing to remember with regard to public folder replication and re-homing is patience, particularly in large environments. It could take several days to complete the replication and re-homing process in very large environments as there are many different factors to be taken into consideration. Later in this article we’ll look at removing the public folder database from the Exchange 2003 server. Just remember, do not proceed with the attempted removal of the Exchange 2003 public folder database or the actual server unless there are zero entries in the Public Folder Instances tab.
The Move All Replicas option itself is simple enough to follow. Once you choose the option, a Move All Replicas window will appear asking you to select the server to which you want the public folders moved. This is shown in Figure 9 where you can see that the server E2K7 is already highlighted since that’s the only other server running a public folder database.
Figure 9: Moving All Public Folder Replicas
Once you’ve chosen the relevant server and clicked OK, a warning prompt appears telling you that the process may take some time and to check the Public Folder Instances tab to confirm the process has been completed. Once you click OK to this warning, another window titled Propagating properties to subfolders will appear and will show the progress as the settings are applied. Once this window disappears, you now need to wait for the move to occur in the background. As I’ve said earlier, you need to wait until the Public Folder Instances is empty as shown below.
Figure 10: No More Public Folder Instances
The MoveAllReplicas script provided with Exchange 2007 is even easier to use. You will find this script in the \Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts folder. From the Exchange 2007 server, run the Exchange Management Shell and then execute the following script:
MoveAllReplicas.ps1 –Server E2K3 –NewServer E2K7
As you can see there are only two parameters, namely Server, the source server, and NewServer, the target server. Once run successfully, the script doesn’t echo anything to the screen so once again, check the Public Folder Instances object on the Exchange 2003 server to confirm that no replicas are left on the Exchange 2003 server.
Offline Address Book
One of the components that you should have updated when removing the first Exchange 2003 server installed into an administrative group was the server responsible for generating the Offline Address List server. This is still a requirement when removing the last Exchange 2003 server from an Exchange 2007 environment since the server responsible for generating the Offline Address Book (note the name change for Exchange 2007) is likely to be the Exchange 2003 server. Here’s the process to do this using the Exchange Management Console:
- Run the Exchange Management Console.
- Select Organization Configuration and then select the Mailbox object. In the list of tabs displayed, click the Offline Address Book tab and you should see a screen similar to that shown in Figure 11. Note that the Generation Server column references the Exchange 2003 server name.
Figure 11: Offline Address Book Entry in Exchange Management Console
- Right-click the entry for the Default Offline Address List and choose the Move option from the context menu. This will bring up the Move Offline Address Book wizard window which consists of a single configuration screen.
- On the opening screen, click the Browse button and in the resulting Select Mailbox Server window, locate and choose the Exchange 2007 mailbox server.
- Back at the opening screen, ensure that the new Exchange 2007 server name is referenced in the Offline address book generation server field as shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12: Preparing to Move the OAB
- Once you are happy that the correct configuration has been selected, click the Move button. The Completion screen should then reveal that the move has been successful.
We’ll look at using the Exchange Management Shell to move the Offline Address Book in the next part of this article.
Summary
In this second part of this article we have mainly covered the important task of moving public folders from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 but at the same time we’ve looked at moving the Offline Address Book via the Exchange Management Console. In the next part of this article, we’ll cover using the Exchange Management Shell to move the Offline Address Book followed by the removal of the databases and Routing Group Connectors.
If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:
