Exchange 2003 to 2007 Server Migration and ESA
smckinney
Posts: 2
I am prepping to migrate from Windows SBS 2003 with Exchange 2003 to SBS 2008 R2 with Exchange 2007. Ideally, I would like to start from scratch with a new domain name for the 2008 install and exmerge the existing mailboxes into Exchange 2007.
I already have mailboxes that have been partially archived by ESA. Since ESA uses the GUID to track mailboxes, I'm assuming that a completely new domain setup would break the association between the archived content and the users mailbox, even though user name and email address will be the same.
Is there any way to re-associate an existing ESA mailbox store to an Exchange mailbox?
Thanks for your help.
I already have mailboxes that have been partially archived by ESA. Since ESA uses the GUID to track mailboxes, I'm assuming that a completely new domain setup would break the association between the archived content and the users mailbox, even though user name and email address will be the same.
Is there any way to re-associate an existing ESA mailbox store to an Exchange mailbox?
Thanks for your help.
Comments
Sorry to say there is no supported way of moving archived messages to a new mailbox associted with a new account. The only supported way is to move the mailbox using the Exchange Move Mailbox wizard. The mailbox GUID is used in lots of places -- on the archived messages themselves, on the ESA configuration message, message store meta.db database, and the folder names inside the store directory. If ther GUID changes, then a substantial amount of hacking needs to be done to get archived message retrieval working again.
Admin Search may still work and that's about it.
You should use a copyback task to put the messages back into Exchange and then re-archive them after the move.