I need some guidance/whiteboard sound offs/feedback/opinions.We've been in a long process of trying to migrate Exchange 2007 to a new server in a new location 1,500 miles away. The only network link is a slow 10MB via a GRE tunnel which has been a great hinderance in the past attempts. I'm trying to see if I can move it to a 40MB link but no promises. Downtime is desired to be the most minimal as possible. Mailbox store size is 184GB.I've tried to follow steps to migrate via same server name/different hardware. That failed due to a huge complex permissions issue due to not-very-well-planned Exchange 2k3 migration to 2k7 from the previous administrator.I've also tried database portability however trying to transfer a 184GB file via a 10MB link is too slow.I've tried to implement mail archival via 3rd party software that was supposed to reduce the database size but it went from 150GB to 184GB so that is not working out either. I'm at the point where I'm starting to restore the emails back to original state and refund the mail archiving software since it is not working out.My next thought: I was hoping I could perhaps use SCR? Any thoughts on that?My last option: Set up the 2nd Exchange server and move mailboxes/public store/address lists over. Which I wanted to avoid because we have some ridiculuously huge mailboxes (biggest one is 6GB). Quota limitations is a no-go. I have a few questions about this procedure:1) After I've moved a mailbox, Autodiscovery should take care of their Outlook/Entourage. What about OWA? The previous administrator set it up so it was https://(servername).(domain).com/owa which I am a bit curious if the user would still be able to access their mailbox at the new mail serverfrom this URL. Would this also impact mobile devices who are pulling from the OWA? 2) We are using Barracuda Spam/Virus filter; after emails are checked, they are sent to the email server. Would the email server forward the email to the destination if it's located on the 2nd email server?3) Do I need to make any DNS/Firewall changes to allow incoming/outgoing traffic from the new email server? I'm guessing yes for outgoing, then when we're done with the first email server - we set up incoming?Help?

Using SCR to "move" a server is an interesting concept, but I havent tried this. It sounds like it should work, but this would only address database content, not the other services. Otherwise, doing a mailbox by mailbox move would be best. How far is the 2nd location? a USB database copy might be another option.moving services to another server is the same idea as described here:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927464

The 2nd location is in VA while the original server is in South Dakota. (New data center). We did try the USB database copy but we weren't able to mount the database so had to revert thus causing the database copy to be outdated.We decided to get a consultant to assist with this deployment. Thanks anyways!

You cannot mount the database from USB, but I meant to use it just as a way to copy the data. But yes it would be outdated and/or require downtime (dismount until hdd gets there).Good luck with the consultant - let us know what you end up doing!