How long will it take...

[philpayton]

To set up an exchange server for an email service for staff and pupils? have never done this before in practice but i know what to do... i was just wondering if anyone had any idea how long it would take? (Currently about 1000 pupils and 100 staff)

Thanks in advance.

[deanc]

think i managed it in a day last summer, its not too hard really just make sure you follow all the instructions properly. it was my first time too.

[djm968]

The Exchange server part of this project will not take very long at all. Migrating mailboxes if required can take a while depending on how mail is currently stored and you will also need to automatically create outlook exchange profiles for all users who need the full outlook client.

I would recommend that students just use OWA

The other thing to remember is you may have a delay of anywhere up to 48 hours for DNS to fully propagate if you need to change your MX records.

[philpayton]

Thanks for your replies. Don't think I'm gonna get round to doing it until Easter or maybe even the summer anyway! Just wanted to know how much of a task it really is. Doesn't seem like it's gonna be too bad anyway.

[Ric_]

@philpayton: Depending upon the speed of your servers, you could have it done in under half a day There's even a handy checklist with tickboxes to make sure you don't miss anything!

DNS is what takes time to be updated mind.

[Lee_K_81]

Although it can be very quick to set up, if things go wrong, they can take a while to discover the cause. I would suggest setting up exchange and leave running for a few days, set up a test account or two, or change a couple of users over to new system if you can run the 2 in parallel, checking logs regularly, etc. to ensure that no problems have arisen. Trying to do an all-in-one change over could cause people to loose e-mail connectivity for a while and giving them a negative perception of the new system. It's hard enough to get users (especially SMT *runs from grumbledook* or teachers *hides*) to accept a new system when it works perfectly, problems will make that acceptance even more difficult to get.....