We have an existing well-running multi-tenant Hosted Exchange 2007 server with approximately 100 mailboxes.? We’re in the very beginning over doing a migration to Exchange 2010, with the ultimate goal later this year of going to Exchange 2013 (we have reasons for doing it in steps like this).? Obviously this involves going to a new server within the existing domain.
We want to start using CloudPanel, however we have a concern about best practice.? Should we implement CloudPanel before the migration or afterwards?? What are the gotchas?
More importantly, what is the process of ensuring that CloudPanel continues to work properly after the migration of the server?
Thanks in advance!
Rick
I’m actually not familiar with hosting with Exchange 2007 but as you know the way it used to work changed a lot from 2007 to 2010 SP2 with Address Book Policies.
The thing with CloudPanel is it is running remote powershell commands and just keeping pointers in the database. With that you can implement it before or afterwards. I would recommend implementing it before but that depends on the way your Active Directory is structured. If you implement it before you can use CloudPanel to create all the address lists, GAL, OAB, and address book policies for you which you can associate with the users after they move over.
CloudPanel has an option to import objects from AD into the database (check out the knowledge base) so you can move everything and get it working on the backend and then just import into SQL
Hi Jacob,
Thanks for the speedy reply. ?So with our existing Exchange 2007 multi-tenant setup it’s about the same as how it is recommended with Cloud Panel (which btw is precisely the way MSFT’s best practice is) – a Hosting group, with sub groups below that for each company. ?OAB’s are separate for each client as are GAL’s.
So I guess where I’m getting confused is, how does CP know which server to work with? ?During the migration does it understand that mailboxes may be distributed between multiple servers of different versions, or does CP become “unlinked” for a period of time until the migration is complete?
This dove-tails into my next question that we’ll be jumping into when we switch over to Exchange 2013, which is how does CP deal with an Exchange cluster (i.e., 3 exchange servers in a cluster with each server consisting of all roles, according to MSFT’s new best practice guidelines)?
But let’s address the first paragraph before jumping into the second. ?Sorry I’m asking all these questions but I’d rather over-plan and then have less surprises.
Rick
Sorry for the late reply.
CloudPanel will point to your new Exchange environment and it won’t automatically pull in your existing users… this is a manual process. I wouldn’t try to import the existing users into CloudPanel because it will try to configure them with Address Book Policies and won’t be able to do that and give you errors (unless they were already moved to newer Exchange). Part of the problem is I’ve never done a 2007 Multi-tenant to 2010 multi-tenant environment migration before. CloudPanel started with Exchange 2010 SP2 using Address Book Policies.
Now as far as the clustering… it doesn’t keep track of anything failover cluster related nor does it keep track of DAGs. You can point CloudPanel to your load balancer to balance all the powershell commands but it will let Exchange handle where to place the mailboxes (best practice.. but does give you an option to choose the database if wanted).
When you enable a mailbox in CloudPanel it is literally running the “Enable-Mailbox” command against the server you have configured in the settings section.
