This month we have started the Migration over to Exchange 2007. We built the infrastructure, have set the Best practices Options. We first moved over three people, and two resource accounts. This showed us some small issues that needed to be fixed. The first one that showed up was the lag the client was showing. This wasn’t a good thing, since we had 5 mailboxes on it, it was specked for 4,000 and it was showing almost an unusable latency. We diagramed the path, and we realized we were making 13 hops for each client, every time it made a connection to the Client Access Servers. We were able to eliminate half the hops by moving the Electronic Messaging AD site behind the same firewall as our load balancers.

The second issue that showed up was that the Free Busy for 2003 users wasn’t being replicated to the 2007 environment. This is still an open issue, and as more people move over to the 2007 environment it will grow exponentially.

We moved over 30 People to the 2007 environment, this is to allow us to be able to gauge any further issues. We even moved over to iMac people to help show any issues using Entourage. So far the main complaint has been the free busy. Next steps are to get the mail routing through the Hub Transport servers.

We did attempt a DR scenario, we were looking to have the ability to use Database portability, to help recover from a server crash. This was a great opportunity to see where we need to adjust our expectations. We also need to get DR stuff in one location to help facilitate the availability of those items. One of the biggest problems found out was that the media that had been burnt was not usable. It crashed at 99%, and not having a second physical copy or an ISO on my laptop pushed any recovery time out 45 minutes as I download the ISO again.

Office Communications Server Pilot

We went into a Production pilot; this is an Office Communications Server R1 installation. Once we moved into this environment, there was a need to move the Mediation Server, the SIP gateway and the Exchange Unified Messaging role. This would enable the pilot users to use Enterprise voice and voicemail. This installation will be scraped in April as we move forward with Office Communications Server R2 engagement with Enabling Technology.

With the move of the Electronic Messaging AD Site behind a different firewall gave us e the ability to tighten the firewall rules. Most issues that have been perceived have been a closed port on the firewall that before a catch all rule was enabling.

The other big gotcha in or environment is that we are in a slightly disjoined named space. This made it necessary to modify the ExchUCUtil.psl file. By default it will go to a Global Catalog server in the domain that the universal groups are defined in. This in our environment is not the same domain that the Exchange servers are deployed in.

To fix this issue I made the change to point the cmdlet to a specific GC by changing these lines.

Exchange 2007 Deployment

One of the first things we had to work on this month was the ramifications of adding a GC into our existing Campus AD Site. When we added the GC that was required for the prepdomain in the 2007 pre-deployment process, we didn’t realize that Exchange 2003 would pick it up in the DSaccess tab, and use it to expand groups. Since the GC is not in the same domain as the exchange servers, when it expanded the groups, it sent back errors. These errors were particularly felt when it was a security permission set on the groups.

The solution was to take the DSAccess off of automatic and manually set the GC’s that it would use for group expansion.

After that configuration was implemented and settled down, we installed three Hub transport servers into the new Exchange 2007 Administrative group. We then left the servers in place, and monitored mail flow, once we were certain that mail still flowed appropriately we then went ahead and introduced the Client Access servers (CAS) and the Mailbox servers.

We are now working on the configuration of the host based firewalls, and the load balancer configurations. After that our Pilot group of users will be ready to help iron out any irregularities’ that may have been introduced.

One of the lessons learned when deploying a new routing group connector was that each server in the legacy exchange organization that will be sending mail across the connector must be in the universal group Excahngelegacy interop group. This will grant them permission to send mail across the connector.

Octel replacement

We are currently looking at the bids again to further determine whos product would be the best fit for Vanderbilt.

Fax server deployment

This project is currently not being activity worked on. It is awaiting confirmation of the Unified Communications Project.

Unified communications project (lighthouse)

We have been accepted into Microsoft’s Lighthouse program for their unified communication product. We are currently waiting for the R2 release of Office Communications Server, and new hardware arrival. This project is dependent on the Exchange 2007 deployment project.

These meetings are still being productive. We have come up with different scenarios with the Exchange 2007 Schema Changes, and even found dependencies that we might not have seen other wise.

The big dependency is that there has to be a GC in the root domain, even if their will never be email accounts in it. This is largely due to the Universal security groups that Exchange 2007 is based upon.

Octel Replacement

No change this month; most meetings were canceled due to members not being present.

Fax server Project

This project has been put on hold. I have turned of the Faxsrv1 equipment and have started to reclaim the FaxSrv2 equipment. We will be building this out with the Windows 2008 standard server operating system.

Unified Communications Pilot

We have started using the DID lines for communications with the outside world. Some team members have seen the usefulness of having the communicator tied into the phone system. It allows them to have the head set on, that way their hands are free to troubleshoot with tech support.

The other big news is that partner support has started using the Communicator software. This has allowed partner support to be able to familiarize themselves with the product and the idiosynchrocies that come along with it. When we go live in Feburary with the full product offering they will be ready to support any issue.

Exchange 2007 design\implementation

There has been a lot of movement on the project. All the hardware has been built and ready to deploy. A total of 4 virtual machines have been built and prepped for installation.

We have procured a subnet, and created a new AD Site, and have it behind a firewall. The AD team has deployed the DC’s dedicated for this site. We are working with the security team to get the proper firewall rules in place.

The delay in this project is the schema changes and the dependency of having a GC in the root site. The decision to build a new DC and have it in the new AD site has been made to help reduce the amount of replication traffic and latency times.

AD\Exchange 2007 meetings

This meeting has been a standing Friday meeting to help coordinate the introduction of Exchange 2007 into the current exchange organization. The mantra we are saying is “Do no harm”. We have created a plan to test the routing in our test environment, to ensure that we are not missing any last minute details that might cause “harm”. We already had our systems in the test environment so a lot of our time has been hurry up and wait. The other thing slowing this down is the availability of the medical center CMS staff, there is a lot of issues in the production environment so the test one takes a back seat.

Octel replacement

The never ending project, I keep thinking each month I will be able to say we have some to a decision, and it looks like the team has came to the another decision, and now we are working with the vendors to ensure that we have a solid Hybrid system. Now the last part of this is to finish the recommendation, and present it to upper manangement.

FaxSrv replacement

This project has been put on hold. The server that this is on, has started have a hard drive failure. It is out of warranty, and there is not any momentum on getting a fax server in place to send fax, because the unified Collaboration project is overlapping it.

Unified Communications Pilot

I have spent the most time this month on this project; it has been a lot of fact checking and configuration checking. I have also spent time on trying to get the test OCS server federated with the Production OCS server. The edge configuration has been interesting. I am seeing it trying to go out, but it is never arriving. Not sure where to go now. Validation works with a couple warnings, I have set the host file to have the hostnames for the external nics, so name resolution shouldn’t be the issue, but I am not 1005 certain that isn’t the problem.

Exchange 2007 design\implementation

The test exchange 2007 systems are working pretty well; here are still some minor details we are still working on. One being that the contacts doesn’t show up in IMAP sessions with Entourage. Have to give Kudos to Dan and Tony for figuring out what the issue was, it seems when I created the mail enabled contacts I didn’t mark one of the mail attributes.

The other outstanding issue is that of free/busy right now if you log into OWA you can see the free\busy but the Outlook client still isn’t showing it for 2003 users.

The Unified Communications project has started to take off. We were commissioned to get 1000 Users on a Production pilot by January 2009. This will take a lot of coordination, and focused effort, but is an obtainable goal. We have set up a weekly meeting with the Medical Center to work through AD and Exchange issues. This is due to the joint and AD environment. We agreed to have the test environment ready to go by the Middle of October, with the production AD ready by the first week of November. Over all, the concerns were mainly about training and co-existence; both of these issues have been addressed.

We met with the UC representative from Microsoft to apply for the Lighthouse program. We looked over our current infrastructure and found that we are not as far off as we thought we would be. One thing that was brought out of the meeting was the redundancy of the mediations server. The Microsoft representative is to supply the answer for that design question.

Exchange Training

Brought a trainer onsite to help transfer skill sets from exchange 2003 to exchange 2007, the first three days was based on labs, and lecture. There were small tid bits that were brought out of what would have to happen in a co-existence phase and user migrations. Mainly that the user object would have to be migrated from a legacy user to a full 2007 user, this will have to be also done for resource rooms to make them true resource account for Exchange 2007.

Octel Replacement

This project has been through many different evaluations. The newest avenue is a co-existence between two voicemail systems, the new system to help do ECP’s and a Unified messaging system to do voice mail. The biggest issue is that Microsoft has made their system hard to co-exist with. So the way to transfer messages between the systems will be via smtp. This is an acceptable solutions so now we are revisiting the solution for a Hybrid.

Fax Server replacement

This project has been on the back burner for a while, I have started the build of a new OS on Fax Server2. This needed to be done to get a New Right Fax installed, and to help clean the OS up from the numerous test projects it has been on. Also the IP was needed to be changed to the .7 network and not the .115.