The specifics of your rollout will depend on the plans youve made. There are some basic processes you have to attend to in a rollout. Many of these processes are people−oriented processes, not technically− oriented processes. This section focuses on the former processes. Rollout doesnt mean dropping a whole Exchange system on your organization at once. It means making Exchange available to specific systems people and users according to a carefully thought−out schedule. You should also go through a testing phase with specific users. Rollout to your general user population needs to be geared to your assessment of user readiness, perhaps at the departmental or subdepartmental level. Rollout also must be deeply rooted in the capacity of systems and user support staff to handle the many issues that arise during implementation of a major new software product. And, in all of this, dont forget that without MIS commitment and support, its highly unlikely that youll be able to smoothly pull off a successful Exchange rollout.
Start in the Right Place You might start your rollout in MISmaybe just with yourself, if youre part of MIS. Next, you might move on to samples of users based on the groupings that you uncovered in your user needs assessment or an assessment of user readiness for the change you are about to drop on them. Remember, youve been working with Exchange and its clients for a while. MIS support and users might have had little exposure to it. They will see the change you are bringing as much more world−shaking than you. Then move steadily onward until all users are up and running in Exchange. The key is to get Exchange out to all users as fast as possible without crashing your organization. (Here Im referring to your real organization, not your Exchange organization.)
Dont Forget Design During Rollout Remember that rollout is an integral part of the Exchange design process. As you step through your implementation plans, be ready to change your design. If something doesnt work, change it now. Dont let things pile up to the point that change becomes virtually impossible. How you schedule your rollout relative to user need and readiness as well as MIS support capacity will determine how able you are to keep up with change orders.
Pay Close Attention to Users Whether youre in a test or production rollout phase, be sure to keep your big shot and plain old users in the loop. Get them committed to Exchange. Let them know if and when theyre going to see a new e−mail client. Show them the client, just so they can see how really easy it is to use to get basic work done. Explain to them how they can use the client you plan to provide both to do what theyre already doing and to get other tasks done.
This is where user training comes in. You probably already know this, but user training is both essential and a major drain on resources. Spend lots of time planning user training. Think very carefully about the amount of time and dollars youre willing to devote to user training. Training is a very specialized activity. If you dont have enough training resources in−house, consider outsourcing user training. Know that some users will get it right away and some will come back again and again seeking answers to questions that were answered both in group training and one−on−one by user support personnel. Finally, remember that your Exchange rollout can be a great success technically, but if no one comes to the show, it will be considered a failure by your bosses or your clients and their bosses.
Stay Close to MIS Staff Keep MIS staff involved and informed as well. An Exchange installation and implementation is a big deal for an MIS department. I bet that over time just about everyone in MIS will get
involved with Exchange. MIS staff should understand and welcome Exchange, not see it as a threat to their jobs. Train MIS personnel as data−processing colleagues rather than just end users. You dont have to tell everyone in MIS everything there is to know about Exchangethey can buy this book for that purpose (hint, hint). But be sure to talk to them about both server and client basics from a more technical perspective.
Summary
Designing a new Exchange system is neither easy nor fast. You must complete several steps and then track back to ensure that youve taken each steps impact on other steps into account. Moving through this iterative process while covering each of the steps in painstaking detail ensures that your Exchange system will function pretty much as expected from the get−go and that costly redesign is kept to a minimum.
One of the most important steps in the design process is the allocation of responsibility for very specific stages of the design and implementation process. This should be the first step in the design process. It ensures that the right people with the right skills and knowledge are in place and that they are clearly in charge of and must account for their particular piece of the design puzzle.
Needs assessments are another key to effective Exchange system design. You must perform assessments of user need, the geographic distribution of your organization and its computing and networking resources, and your data network. Needs assessments focus on not only what is required as new, but also on what of the old can be preserved.
Exchange Server 2003 is a network−dependent, network−intensive system. You need to establish a consistent set of conventions for naming your Exchange organization, administrative groups, servers, and recipients. You must choose a Windows 2003 networking model that fits well with your organizations geographical distribution and business structures. You must define the boundaries of Exchange administrative groups, the administrative units into which you break your Exchange organization. As with domain models, geographic distribution and business structures might be key to setting these boundaries. If required, you must define boundaries for Exchange routing groups and determine how your routing groups will communicate across wide area networks.
Next, you must design your Exchange servers, paying attention to performance, storage capacity, reliability, backup, and networking users to your servers. When youve designed your Exchange server environment, you must deal with connecting your servers to other messaging systems, both public and private. Here you must select from among available Exchange connectors and gateways. As your Exchange network becomes a reality, you must ensure, through exhaustive testing, that everything works as planned and up to whatever performance, reliability, and other standards you must adhere to.
Finally, you need to develop a plan for rolling out your Exchange system when everything is ready and has been tested. You shouldnt expect everything to be perfect on first rollout. However, if youve adhered to the design steps laid out in this chapter, your rollout experience should be a fairly pleasant one.
In the next chapter, Ill talk about upgrading from NT 4 Server to Windows Server 2003, and from Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003. Even if you dont need to do an upgrade, I encourage you to read the next chapter. Thinking through the upgrade process will help you better understand the inner workings of Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003.
Chapter 6: Upgrading to Windows Server 2003 and
Exchange Server 2003
Overview
Welcome to Hell! Thats the first title that I wanted to use for this chapter. Upgrading operating systems and key applications is always scary, very scary. The thought of upgrading both Windows and Exchange is enough to stop even the strongest heart for at least a few beats. Heres the good news: If youve already upgraded to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000, your job will be relatively easy. If your organization is among that large group still running Windows NT and Exchange 5.5, upgrading to 2003 will be less traumatic than it was for those who upgraded to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 early on, but youll still need to do a few unexpected tasks.
The good news is that Microsoft has done something to simplify your task whatever your Exchange upgrade or installation needs. After much complaining from us users, Microsoft did something to make upgrading or freshly installing Exchange servers much easier by implementing Exchange Deployment Tools (EDT) for Exchange 2003. Basically, EDT is a set of interactive checklists that guide you through each step of an Exchange 2003 upgrade or installation. EDT checklists include everything from upgrading Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, to installing a brand new Exchange 2003 system. And you cant escape EDT. When you insert the Exchange 2003 CD, the first screen you see offers a bunch of informational resources and an opportunity to run EDT. Thats it! If you want to install Exchange 2003, you have to choose the tools.
Tip You can always run SETUP.EXE in the \SETUP\I386 directory on the Exchange 2003 CD if you want to bypass EDT. Keep in mind, however, that SETUP.EXE is for real Exchange experts who have manually completed the pre−SETUP.EXE steps that EDT will automatically guide you through.
Much of what I explain in this chapter can be done through EDT. So, I suggest you read what I have to say and then start up EDT and select your upgrade scenario. Sometimes youll find that EDT assumes youve made certain planning and implementation decisions, such as selecting a model for your upgrade. Also, you may find yourself doing something recommended by EDT that you dont understand or are concerned about running. The pearls of wisdom in this chapter help put EDT in perspective.
As we go through this chapter, Ill call your attention to the deployment tools when its time to use them. If you forget about the tools, dont worry, youll be reminded about them when you insert the Exchange 2003 CD. Even though Ive done it a number of times now, I still tremble a little when I have to do a Windows or an Exchange upgrade. So, Im going to try to help you avoid some of the anxiety I feel about upgrading. Even so, you might need help from others, especially on the NT upgrade side. Take a look at Mastering Windows Server 2003, by Mark Minasi, Christa Anderson, Michele Beveridge, C.A. Callahan, and Lisa Justice (Sybex, 2003). Also, be sure to read the Exchange Server 2003 docs on upgrades. They do a pretty good job of laying out your options for both NT 4/Windows 2000 and Exchange 5.5 Server/ Exchange Server 2000 upgrades. The main problem with them is their organization and the lack of integration between the two. In this chapter, I give you a more synergistic view of Windows and Exchange upgrades than the one provided in the
Exchange docs.
Much of what I talk about here depends on your knowledge of topics covered in the first five chapters. If youve skipped to here because you just couldnt wait to get into the knotty issues related to upgrading, youre soon going to be even more anxious than I was when I first confronted the subject. If you havent already done
Chapter 3, Two Key Architectural Components of Windows Server 2003; Chapter 4, Exchange Server 2003 Architecture, and Chapter 5, Designing a New Exchange 2003 System.
Migrating For the Easiest Upgrade
By using the Exchange Migration Wizard, you can avoid a lot of the time, effort, and problems related to upgrading an Exchange server, especially an Exchange 5.5 server, to Exchange 2003. There are two requirements and one caveat.
You must be willing to change the name of your Exchange organization, placing it in a new Windows 2003 forest and domain.
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You must set up a new domain controller and Exchange 2003 server. Both of them can be on the same computer if resources are scarce. See Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.
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This method works best with Exchange servers with a small number of smaller mailboxes and public folders, though it can work with any size server.
The Exchange Migration Wizard (All Programs > Microsoft Exchange > Migration Wizard) creates Windows 2003 users with all of the Exchange parameters and then replicates mailboxes from the old to the new server. You can move public folders by copying them into a mailbox, running the Wizard, and then copying them from the replicated mailbox into the Exchange All Public Folders folder. When youre done migrating, you restart Exchange services on the new server, set users to connect to the new Exchange server, and youre finished. Using a 300 MHz Pentium Exchange 5.5 source server and a 2.4GHz Xeon Exchange 2003 target server, I got a mailbox transfer rate of about 2.4MB per minute. Thats pretty slow if your source server has very large mailboxes or a lot of larger mailboxes. But without having to jump through all the hoops that Im going to talk about in this chapter.
For more on the Exchange Migration Wizard, see the section Migrating Foreign Messaging System Users to Exchange in Chapter 16, Advanced Exchange Server Administration and Management. Dont be put off by the word "foreign." The Wizard considers any messaging system other than Exchange 2003 to be foreign.
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Also, I strongly recommend that you read Chapter 7, Installing Windows Server 2003 as a Domain Controller, and Chapter 8, Installing Exchange Server 2003, before starting an upgrade. Theres lots of information there that youll find quite useful both before and after you complete an upgrade. For example, in this chapter, I lightly cover some of the processes and tasks required in an upgrade because they are discussed in more detail in Chapters 7 and 8.
Featured in this chapter:
Upgrading from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003
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Upgrading from Exchange 2000 Server to Exchange Server 2003
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Upgrading Windows NT Server 4 to Windows Server 2003: processes and techniques
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Upgrading Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003: processes and techniques
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Windows NT4to2003 and Exchange 5.5to2003 upgrades: putting it all together
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