Almost everything I read about moving from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 states transitioning the system one piece at a time, starting with the client access server on down. To me it seems easier to install Exchange 2007 from scratch and then move the mailboxes over to the new servers. Is it possible to do this? Other then forcing us to recreating recipient policies, is there any reason we shouldn't go this route? Thanks.

Hi, By scratch you mean building a new forest and then installing exchange 2007 here? There is more work included in such a solution. Coexistance - how does a migrated user send mail to a non migrated user - they can't see each other in the GAL You would need to share the SMTP domain name to make sure that all mails can get delivered Deployment - you would have to reconfigure all Outlook clients Clients - all clients will loose the settings they have, delegates, permissions on folders, general configuration of Outlook Those are only some of the reasons not to start all over if possible. Any reason why you are considering such a solution? There might be other ways. Leif

No, not start a new forest. Keep the same forest and domain. Instead of say replacing the current setup piece by piece, set up exchange 2007parallel to exchange 2003 inside the same domain and then just migrating the mailboxes. After migration, we would point the dns entry for the old server to the newsetup to the new avoid reconfiguring outlook. We have a simple setup with a single exchange cluster in a single site in a single domain. All of our users are in one place.

Hi, Not sure what you mean. When you install an exchange 2007 server in a windows forest the setup program will see that there is already an exchange 2003 environment and add the 2007 server to this environment. This will allow you to complete the 2007 installation andcinfiguration before you start moving mailboxes. Outlook clients will be redirected to the new server when the users mailbox is moved. Leif

Ok. Based on what I have read, it sounded like you had to install each role individually and replace the corresponding exchange 2003 the server instead of just install everything and move. Thanks.