I have a failing Exchange 2007 SP 2 that I need to upgrade to Exchange 2013.  Yes, I do have consistent mail box backups to disk (Backup Exec 2014).

I have several failed attempts on creating a VMWare 5 machine out of this EX 7 server.  We are out of hard drive space and unable to do the service pack 3.  The new server (EX 13) will have a 300 gig root directory and data drive of over 1 terabyte.

I am looking for suggestions for the cleanest solutions to upgrading this server to 2013 since doing a migration with coexistence has been ruled out .  I work for a small company without funds to allow me to purchase some really good software to assist with this problem.  I cannot have the email server down for more than over night unless I do it over the weekend.

first you need to stabilize you environment and you need to have min patching which SP3 and RU10. Once you have then install Ex2013 on a new physical server or a virtual machine.

http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2013/migration-deployment/planning-and-migrating-small-organization-exchange-2007-2013-part7.html

I read your suggestive material.  Because my biggest problem is that I have less than 5 gigs of hard drive space on the root directory of my current exchange server, causing it to fail several times, and not able to expand the drive on that server, Would this work...

1.  Install VMWare 5.0 on my new exchange server (Server A).

2.  Convert the Exchange 2007 server to a virtual machine expanding the Root directory on Server A and do the two updates, SP3 and RU10.

3.  My current Exchange 2007 server (Server B) is 64 bit with 12 gigs of memory, install VMWare 5.0 here also. Move Exchange 2007 from Server A back to Server B.  Wipe Server A, install Server 2012 and Exchange 2013.

4.  Start the exchange server migration

First thing I 'd do is the full backup of Exchange using Backupexec. This will give you the space occupied by the log drive.

check how much space is consumed by log?

Hi Praxis,

Thank you for your question.

If we could not recovery Exchange 2007 from Exec2014, we suggest you could perform a disaster recovery for Exchange 2007 by the following link:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998890(v=exchg.80).aspx

Then, we could  follow ExchangeITPros advice to upgrade Exchange 2007 SP2 to Exchange 2007 SP3 CU10.

Then we could start migration by the following link:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2013/07/25/part-1-step-by-step-exchange-2007-to-2013-migration.aspx

If there are any questions regarding this issue, please be free to let me know. 

Best Regard,