Hi guys,

What would it take (first steps) to migrating a company's mail from a service provider to a local server running exchange server 2003.

Thanks

Depends on the level of cooperation you have with your ISP. Most times its practically non-existent. More importantly, the stress and complexity of migration depends on the amount of mailboxes involved.

On top of my head, I think the initial steps to be taken should be as follows:

1. Plan and deploy your exchange 2003 server

2. Archive users mailbox contents from the ISP into .pst files. (You can do this easily with outlook)

3. Create new mailboxes for each user on the exchange server.

4. Use exmerge to copy the contents of the archived mailboxes for each user into the newly created mailboxes on the local exchange server.

5. Change MX records for your mail domain (wherever this is being hosted) to give priority to your local exchange server. You should still leave MX record entry for the ISP mail server to ensure that mails are still queued at the ISP before you finally switch over to your local exchange server.


The importance of proper planning and deployment of exchange server cannot be underemphasised. Ensure spam filtering, security against undesired mail relays, IP address filtering etc have all been put in place before switching over to your exchange box. 

Regards

-Still havent completed the visio drawings. My exams should be over by thursday and i can give it the full attention it deserves-

Thanks Man, Once again u are ha life saver, i do owe u one. I submitted the last drawing u gave me after making some adjustments here and there (using Smart Draw 2008) and the MD approved of them though of course i would still be working on the detailed drawings.

Thanks again, and wish u the best of luck with ur exams.

Chau

After changing the Mx records, should the A records not also be changed?

Definitely, an A record entry is needed for the new exchange server included in the mx record. Regards