Upgrade Path for EV whilst upgrading Exchange from 5.5 to 2007

[Fats25]

As the title says really!  I have taken a browse through this site, and the forums, but cannot see anything obvious that details a paralell upgrade here.

(Firstly - apologies I am a bit ring rusty - as I am a PM now and have not touched EV for a few years, and have no access to an EV server to investigate further. 

I am being told by supposedly technical people that the only way to do this is to restore all the data from the Vault to Ex 5.5, migrate, and then start again with a new EV 2007 attached to the new E2k7 server.  I cannot believe that is true.)

I have a site that is currently running Ex5.5 with EV 6 SP4.

We will be using Quest for the Exchange Upgrade to E2k7, on completely new hardware.  Each mailbox will be being moved to the new server, and the old mailbox "stub" will be being left behind on the old 5.5 server for routing purposes til completion of the migration of all sites to E2k7.  "Primary NT" account will change for the new mailbox, into a new AD Forest.

From what I have read - the following is true:-

• EV6 SP4 will work with both Ex5.5 and E2k7 - Is this true?
• When upgrading the EV server, we can follow an upgrade path of 6.0, 6.0 (SP's), 7.0, 7.0 (SP's) and then 2007

If EV6 SP4 works with both Ex5.5 and E2k7 (my thinking is) the most logical upgrade path is the following:-

1. Keep existing Vault server on EV6 SP4
2. Migrate Mailboxes
3. Add new Exchange Mailbox/AD account as full permissions/owner to existing Vault "mailboxes"
4. Verify everything works as expected with new mailbox
5. Remove 5.5 Account/Mailbox from Enterprise Vault
6. Go through Vault Upgrade path as above

Anyone offer any advice as to whether I should go back to just being a PM?  Or have I got a point to argue with the technical people?!

What would your solution be to get to Exchange 2007, with the existing Vault server.  If necessary a new Vault server could be "spun up".

Thanks

Message Edited by Fats25 on 01-06-2009 07:07 AM

[AndrewB]

When we upgraded from Exchage 5.5 to 2003 a couple years ago we used EV6 to reduce the amount of data we had to migrate! We didn't push the data back to exchange, migrate it, and then archive it back.

HOWEVER, in your case, you throw an extra wrench in there. I don't know the effect that changing each mailbox's AD account (new forest, new domain too?) and such will have on the archives. It seems like you might be left with a bunch of orphaned archives due to this.

As for the upgrade of EV itself, like you stated it's pretty straight-forward. EV6 to EV7 to EV2007. I would upgrade EV to 2007 before your exchange migration.

[Fats25]

Maybe I have missed something here - but I am not sure how we can upgrade to Vault prior to upgrading Exchange?  I thought that EV2007 would not work with Exchange 5.5?  So how would the Vault continue to be used for production data with mailboxes on Ex5.5?

Also with regards to the Forest/Domain piece.

I do not remember previous versions of Vault requiring they were in same Forest as the Exchange server.  This could have changed with E2k7 as AD is the Directory now rather than in 5.5 with it's own directory.  Does anyone know?  I assumed as long as there was intra forest trusts then this would be no issue.

Same as for authentication.  I know in the past I have managed to authenticate to an EV "mailbox" using a trusted forest account with no issues.  Again unless anyone knows better.

The plan is to leave the Vault server in "Forest Israel" and then supply credentials from "Forest E2k7", for service account permissions back to the Exchange server.  So the EV server will continue to reside in "Forest Israel", but Exchange server (and mailboxes/accounts) reside in "Forest E2k7".

[AndrewB]

Sorry about that. You're right about Ex55 and EV compatability.