Printable View
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.....