DAY 5 – REPLICATING SYSTEM AND PUBLIC FOLDERS
Throughout the first four days, we planned our new Exchange 2007 organisation, put the necessary jobs in order, prepared Active Directory, installed our first Exchange 2007 server (CAS server) and got an SSL certificate from a third party authority for our CAS server. We also installed our Hub Transport and Mailbox servers.
In Day 5, i will transfer the necessary System and Public Folders from Exchange 2003 servers to the new Exchange 2007 servers. For this purpose, i will add my new servers as replication partners in addition to the old servers first. After all the replication finishes, i will remove the old servers from the replication team and only Exchange 2007 servers will be left as public and system folder holders.
Firstly, i begin with the replication of System Folders. By default, System Folders are not shown in System Manager console of Exchange 2003 server. To view these folders, i right click the Public Folders container under Administrative Groups in System Manager and select “View System Folders” from the menu. After this action, i can see the system folders now. The folders that i have to take care of are:
Schedule + Free/Busy Offline Address Book Organızational forms
Under SCHEDULE+FREE/BUSY folder, there are two subfolders. I right click the EX:/o=mstip/ou=First Administrative Group and add MB01 and MB02 as replication partners under replication tab. I also do the same thing for the other subfolder, EX:/o=mstip/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT).
After SCHEDULE+FREE/BUSY folder, OFFLINE ADDRESS BOOK folder is the next. I right click the /o=mstip/cn=addrlists/cn=oabs/cn=Default Offline Address List subfolder and open “All Tasks -> Manage Settings”. A wizard appears and i add my two new Exchange 2007 server to the replica group by following “replica server change -> add new server” path. This time, as you can realize, I do the replication grouping in a different way. Because OFFLINE ADDRESS BOOK folder has may subfolders and by using “Manage Settings Wizard” i don’t have to do the same replication grouping action on each subfolders of OFFLINE ADDRESS BOOK folder. I apply the same procedure to the Organization(41f) subfolder of EFORMS REGISTRY folder and the replication grouping for system folders is finished.
Figure 1: System folders
Then i open the “Public Folder Instances” under Public Folders container of newly added Exchange 2007 servers. I check the folder sizes of replicated folders and decide to wait for some time to let the replication finish. By the way, there are some differences in kilobytes between the replicated folders of Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 servers. When i look at the numbers of replicated objects, they are moreorless the same. Therefore, time is the cure. I have to wait :).
After System Folders, i have to take care of Public Folders in the same way. The “Business Contacts” folder under Public Folders is not used in my organisation so i delete it immediately. “Internet Newsgroup” folder is not used either but Exchange does not let me to delete it. Therefore, i modify the permission for this folder and hide it from the users. Rest of the public folders can be replicated now as i did it for System Folders.
Now it is time to change the server which is responsible for Offline Address List generation. For this purpose i expand the Recipients container in System Manager and right click the Offline Address List and open its properties. There is a Browse button on the right side. I click this button and select our new Exchange 2007 server, MB01. By doing this, we change the server for Offline Address List generation. I will wait for a while for full transfer of Offline Address List to the new server so i must not touch the old server for some time.
Figure 2: Offline Address Lists
Recipient Update Services (RUS) is another component i have to transfer. It is mainly used for matching the Active Directory accounts to e-mail addresses. If anything happens to the responsible server, this could be a big problem for organisation. Therefore it is important to transfer the service to the new server carefully. I expand the Recipients container in System Manager and when i select the Recipient Update Services, two services appear on the right side. I right click the first one and click Properties. Another windows is opened and i Browse for MB01 and select it. I quit the window by pressing OK button. I do the same thing for the second service and that is all for Recipient Update Services.
We are not finished for Day 5 yet. Until now we replicate some of the folders and transfer some of the services to new servers. After the replications will finish, i have to delete Exchange 2003 servers from replication groups by using the same menus. I will let the replication to complete for one week and then i exclude the old servers from replication groups and delete all the related data from them.
Lets move the Public Folder hierarchy from old server to the new one now. After that, i will control the Public Folders that are related with Exchange 2007 mailbox databases via EMC. The first one is simple actually. I open the System Manager of Exchange 2003 server and right click Exchange 2007 Administrative Group and select “New -> Public Folder Container”. After the creation of container, i drag the “Public Folders” container under Exchange 2003 Administrative Group and drop it to the newly created container under Exchange 2007 Administrative Group. That is all :)
To control the Public Folders that are related with mailbox databases, I open the EMC on an Exchange 2007 server. I go to Mailbox under Server Configuration. I right click the mailbox databases and select Properties. There is a tab called “Client Settings” on properties of mailbox database and control whether “Default public folder database” is pointing our new servers or not.
That is all for today. The next day i will transfer the mailboxes to my new servers. Also i will create policies which are identical to the policies of Exchange 2003 organisation. At last, i write a disclaimer and set it up for external emails. Bye for now.
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