Exchange Server 2010 from Exchange Server 2003

Exchange Server 2010 from Exchange Server 2003

Before doing the migration of mailboxes and settings to your destination server, here are the things to do:

1. ask each user to review and delete their personal documents from the user's folder, company's shared folder that are on the server.
2. Archive old mails to into a .pst file,
3. close MS Outlook on their client computer during this process of migration.
3. delete unwanted emails from their mailbox including the sent items folder and deleted items/trash.
After doing these, make sure you backup the database. Then check the status of the Exchange server 2003 by using Exchange Server Database utilities.

Although, you have to consider some of the following before doing migration to avoid problems:

1. Make sure you have Exchange 2003 SP2 or higher. You cannot do this with SP1 or earlier versions.
2. This process is done offline, therefore, you won't be able to access your mailbox during migration.
3. Use the move request cmdlets in Exchange Management Shell while performing the move server running on Exchange 2010. You cannot do this if your server is running on Exchange 2003 to move mailboxes.
4. You must use shared mailboxes because Exchange 2003 does not have resource mailboxes. The request then makes a mailbox as a shared Exchange 2010 mailbox (from Exchange 2003 to 2010). After moving the mailbox to your Exchange 2010, you can now convert it to a resource mailbox.