In this article We’ll walk you through how to perform a transition / upgrade from Exchange 2000/2003 to Exchange Server 2007. A transition is the process in which you perform an upgrade to Exchange 2007, that is you move data from any legacy Exchange servers in your Exchange organization to new Exchange 2007 Servers, after which you decommission the legacy Exchange servers. A transition should not be confused with a migration, because unlike a transition a migration is the process in which you move data from a non-Exchange messaging system (such as GroupWise, Lotus Notes or SendMail) to an Exchange organization, or move data from a legacy Exchange organization in an existing Active Directory Forest to an Exchange organization in a new Active Directory Forest.

It’s important to note that unlike previous versions of Exchange, in-place upgrades from Exchange 2000 or 2003 to Exchange Server 2007 aren’t supported, because, among other reasons, Exchange 2007 is 64-bit and therefore requires the x64-bit version of Windows Server 2003.

Note:
Exchange Server 2007 also exists in a 32-bit version but this version is meant to be used for testing and evaluation purposes only, so unless we’re speaking management tasks, it’s only the 64-bit version of Exchange Server 2007 that’s supported in a production environment.

Although in-place upgrades to Exchange 2007 are unsupported, I can assure you that a transition from Exchange 2000 or 2003 to Exchange 2007 in the same Active Directory Forest is a straightforward process, as I’ll show you throughout this article series.

Installing previous versions of Exchange was never a difficult task as long as you were prepared. You would install the required IIS components then prep the domain and you were ready to go. Exchange 2007 changes the installation procedure, but it is still as easy as previous versions, as long as you understand the differences.  however there have been some changes in the install process for Exchange 2007. Part one of this series will cover the prerequisites required and preparation of Active Directory.

What could be worse than facing a seriously corrupted mailbox store? Yes you guessed right – facing a completely dead Exchange Server. In this article I’ll shine some light on the steps necessary in order to restore an Exchange 2003 Member Server, that has experienced a major hardware failure causing a complete loss of data.

Creating a Recovery Storage Group

If you would like to recover a single mailbox on your production Exchange Server 2003 you are able to do so. You just have to add and configure the fifth storage group on your server – known as Recovery Storage Group and you will not have to configure your separate recovery server in an isolated forest as you had to do with Exchange 2000 Server.