Lets explore the task of migrating from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange 2007 (because companies still have it out there!). We will cover all areas of the migration including the most critical of phases, planning and preparation. Time spent here will save you many days later on in the project. We will show exactly how to create connectivity between the two systems and will discuss some of the common pitfalls of interoperability. Finally, we will cover the actual migration, showing the use of both native and 3rd party tools, namely the Quest GroupWise Migrator for Exchange. The intention is to write the definitive article on GroupWise to Exchange migration. We will make use of & refer to existing material, which will be corrected and or updated where appropriate. The series will walk any prospective migration consultant through both the theory and practice highlighting specific pointers and tips where we can help, and gotchas that you must watch out for.
It is very common for some of your users to express an interest in having their mail delivered to a mailbox that is external to your organization. For example, the user is going to be working away from the office and would like their mail to be delivered to their Hotmail account. Another request might be to have their mail delivered to a different person altogether.
In a previous article I explained that the health of your DNS operations is crucial to the health of your Exchange environment. I covered two types of DNS problems that affect Exchange: connectivity between Exchange servers and DNS servers, and performance of DNS servers. In this article, I explain the importance of DNS server integrity, including zone integrity, Active Directory (AD) DNS, and name resolution. Note that before you can troubleshoot DNS, you must validate connectivity to your DNS service.
DNS is often considered a “black box” in the sense that once you have it configured and working, it’s very hard to figure out why it breaks. Yet the health of your Exchange environment is tied to the health of your network’s DNS operations. There are three classes of DNS problems that can adversely affect Exchange: overall connectivity between Exchange servers and DNS servers, overall performance of DNS servers, and the DNS servers’ integrity—that is, the optimal configuration from both a technical and best-practices standpoint. Every DNS problem you encounter should fall into one of these categories. I’ll provide an in-depth look at DNS, its core components, and the approach you should take when troubleshooting specific classes of issues. Understanding the different classes of DNS issues and the troubleshooting process required to approach a specific type of issue will demystify DNS so that it’s no longer the black box it typically is for Exchange administrators. I’ll begin by looking at DNS’s related connectivity and performance issues, and in an upcoming article, I’ll explore DNS integrity.
