Upgrade path suggestions for EV, Exchange and Citrix

[ShawnBrown]

Hi All,  Sorry for the long post.  Totally in over my head here...

We are a small business of 100 users finally getting around to some neeed upgrades.  We are an IT staff of 2 and would like suggestions on an upgrade path.  Our current environment is as follows:

EV 9 and DA 9 , running on Server 2008 R2, both on same server.
SQL 2008 x64 Standard (NOT R2) on same server.
Exchange 2007, have started upgrade to Exchange 2013.
User access is running Citrix XenApp 5 on Server 2008 x64 using WOW64 (NOT R2),  Building new Citrix on Xen Desktop (Win 7) in a few months.
Outlook 2007 on current XenApp with EV 9 Outlook HTTP Add-In

My Managment wants me to get the Exchange 2013 upgrade done in the next few weeks, but I had a couple questions regarding EV.

1) I read though the Compatibility Charts, and everything looks okay to upgrade to a minimum of EV 10.  Until I got to the EV Windows Client portion. The Charts indicate the EV 10 client is not compatible with our XenApp since it runs 2008 x64 and not R2.  Does that mean that the EV 10 Outlook Add-In will not work either? Is the add-in a different client?  I can't upgrade the XenApp Servers to 2008 R2 because of the version of Citrix.

2) What would happen if I leave EV alone  at version 9 and just migrate the mailboxes to Exchange 2013?  I realize that EV 9 won't archive anything more from the mailboxes until it is upgraded to at least EV 10, but could the clients still access what has already been archived using the Outlook add-in currently in place?

Any other options to consider?

Thanks,
Shawn

[WiTSend · Accepted solution]

The EV9 client would still work with the EV10 server deployment (minus any new features of EV10). 

[GertjanA · Accepted solution]

Hello Shawn,

Being a small team puts a load on you, good luck with that.

What I would do:

Upgrade EV to EV11.01 before doing anything else. (yo need to go to EV10 first, but seeing you have a small environment, you could upgrade in a day).

This way, after the upgrade, you have the option to move EV to Windows2012R2, with SQL2012R2 if necessary. You then also have support for Exchange 2013. Be advised thought that there is an issue with CU6 and CU7 for Exchange 2013, which causes EV11.x to not be certified against those two CU's.

Good luck.