Exchange ’03 Migration Looming
Well this weekend, we’ll be (finally) getting rid of our exchange 5.5 server. Much to my chagrin, we’re not replacing it with a qmail server. Heck…I’d even settle for sendmail! We’ll be upgrading to the latest and greatest of Redmond’s “groupware” servers (whatever that means), Exchange 2003.
It’ll actually be a really good change. Outlook web access in ’03 is *much* better and more stable than in 5.5. Granted, you still need IE to get the most advantages out of it, but that’s not exactly a surprise. I guess Microsoft hasn’t figured out how to code any web apps without using ActiveX extensively. Oh well.
So today, I switched our Barracuda spam firewall so that it’s checking for valid email addresses against LDAP on our DC. That went fine. Tonight, I’ll change the email routing so that all SMTP mail will route through the new server. Hopefully that’ll go fine (thankfully it’s very easy to switch back if something blows up). Fortunately, email is fairly tolerant of outages and such, so if our email is down for an hour or so while we do the upgrade, nothing will be lost.
Today, I also installed an SSL certificate for the Outlook Web Access server, which was fun. I’ve installed certs in apache countless times, and it’s very easy, but I’d never done in in IIS. Surprisingly, with all of the “Install Certificate” wizards and such in IIS, I still found it more cumbersome to do than in apache, where all you have to do is add a few lines to your VirtualHost configuration, send it a HUP, and voila. Oh well.
Stay tuned to see how things end up going with the big migration on saturday.
Apparently the one in November wasn’t production then? As for the certificate, I’ve always had the same impression of IIS. BTW, don’t manage to mess it up between making the cert and getting it approved. The crazy wizards made you pick up on the same config and continue, can’t leave multiples open at a time or anything. I much prefer the separate files that can be moved around however one wants.
Well actually, November is when we installed the server. At that time, we moved the IS department mailboxes over (myself and my boss dan). We were intending on migrating the rest of the company soon therafter, but the holidays got in the way…so this saturday it is.
“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards – for they are subtle and quick to anger”
Okay – that had to be quoted. But yes, I know what you mean. I went through the wizard one time to generate the CSR, and then was instructed to go back to the same wizard to install the cert. Upon starting the wizard back up, I was surprised, as you said, to find a completely different set of options. I guess I was lucky that I generated the CSR correctly the first time :-)
I much prefer qmail or sendmail to Exchange as well, but I have to say that nothing beats OWA. I haven’t found one webmail app that comes even close to OWA. Regarding the reliance on IE and ActiveX, there’s not really anything you can do short of downloading a slow java applet to provide the functionality that it does.
Good luck with the migration… Exchange 5.5 -> 2003 is a huge leap (like WinNT -> 2003/Active Directory you might say…)
I’ve been meaning to install OpenExchange somewhere to test it out, but haven’t had the time yet. I’ve heard that it’s really nice, though. You can see screenshots here:
http://www.novell.com/products/openexchange/screenshots.html
I should really just buckle down and install it on my linode.