Exchange

[Jawloms]

I'm thinking of building a new Windows domain. I have an on-site exchange 2010 SP3 server. I'd like an Exchange 2016 server. I'm not going cloud as I don't have the Internet for it. What's the best way of migrating email over?

 

Build the new domain with a new email server in it, have a forest trust, migrate everyone over from the old server in the old domain to the new server in the new domain?

Build the new domain with a new email server in it, put the old server in the new domain and migrate everyone from the old server to the new server?

Build a new email server in the existing domain, migrate all users to it, then move the new server in to the new domain?

None of the above?

 

Thanks

 

Stuart

[timbo343]

Just want to point out the "I don't think we have the internet for it" part of your message.

 

What's your current connection speeds and how many users / devices have you got?

 

I was in the same boat as you in 2017 and took the plundge.

 

I would have a cloud exchange system now any day over an OnPrem one.

[Jawloms]

Just want to point out the "I don't think we have the internet for it" part of your message.

 

What's your current connection speeds and how many users / devices have you got?

 

I was in the same boat as you in 2017 and took the plundge.

 

I would have a cloud exchange system now any day over an OnPrem one.

 

High school, 700 kids, 100 staff, 3 computer suites, 4 laptop trollies, 35mb on a good day.

[3s-gtech]

You won't be able to move the new Exchange server across domains - it's so heavily integrated that it'll go nightmarishly wrong. Option 1 looks okay to me. Consider Exchange 2019 if you're doing this - it has been out for long enough to have had plenty of testing (there will always be bugs of course).

[Max_Power]

Whats the purpose for moving to a new domain, in making a new domain you may give yourself needless headaches and exchange will only be one of them.

 

Migrated Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2016 couple of years ago, it wasn't too bad, mailboxes moved over quite easily and quickly, but that was on the same domain. Nice GUI to migrate across, took about 2 days to migrate 1.75TB of data in mailboxes, and separated them into multiple databases.

[djm968]

Have you thought about running Exchange 2019 in Full Hybrid mode?

 

Configuring Exchange 2019 and Exchange Online in Full Hybrid mode

[Arthur]

Consider Exchange 2019 if you're doing this - it has been out for long enough to have had plenty of testing (there will always be bugs of course).

Doesn't Exchange 2019 need a minimum of 128GB RAM though?

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/plan-and-deploy/system-requirements?view=exchserver-2019#hardware

[3s-gtech]

...that is quite a jump from 2016! None of my hosts have that much RAM, let alone any VMs allocated that.

 

Ahem. Yeah 2016 is very good, and migration is straightforward (there are some outstanding step-by-step guides).

[XiJ]

Invest in connectivity and use exchange online? Would that be an option ?

[timbo343]

High school, 700 kids, 100 staff, 3 computer suites, 4 laptop trollies, 35mb on a good day.

Your place sounds very very much like ours - 750 kids, 120 ish staff, 7 IT suites and around 500 machines.

 

We had a FTTC line which was around 40mb and found this to be ok, but we did have to get a second line in from Zen and after a bit of an equipment upgrade we found our 49mb line was actually a 70mb line. Our smoothwall is load balancing the lines too.

 

Also we found that we've had to block the office templates from being pulled down from the net as each time a user logged in and fired up Office, our lines were saturated with MS traffic downloading the templates.

 

By moving exchange to the cloud I can now do soooo much more with exchange and not have to worry about the maintenance, databases, connections and everything elese that goes with it.

 

Also you'll be surprised at how little you use but a second line load balanced will be the best way to go.

 

Do you know how much bandwidth you are using now of your 35mb line?

Edited February 13, 2019 by timbo343

[chaplic]

There is *No* technical reason to stand up a fresh AD. Ive hear the fresh start, learning from mistakes, new structure arguments. No. moving AD is painful as hell and zero business benefit. you will end up with two ADs for far longer than you think

 

assuming the same domain, standing up a new version of exchange and moving mailboxes is very smooth. Id still echo others in advising to look very hard at o365. if your kit is currently on prem your disaster recovery plans are a pain, and on a day to day basis outlook in cached mode isnt bad on slow connections. id even go for fslogix for shared desktop ost caching.

fad