Exchange 2007 to 2013 migration

Many IT professionals might be planning to migrate from Exchange 2007 to 2013. After completing many migrations for customers, we wanted to share some helpful links that will be invaluable when it comes to migrating a live system to a new version.

Before carrying out an Exchange 2007 to 2013 migration, we have a couple of useful pointers;

• You will not be able to rename your exchange server once Exchange 2013 is installed without a lot of unnecessary effort.
• Make sure you plan plenty of out of hours down time ready for migrating your user’s mailboxes.
• Unfortunately there is no direct upgrade path to Exchange 2016 without going to 2010 or 2013 first, this would also involve a third interim server.

Migration guides

So first up is the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant from Microsoft – by far the most useful link here that guides you through every aspect of your migration. This covers everything from your current setup right through to post migration checks and removing legacy exchange servers.

Microsoft Exchange Server Deployment Assistant

Usually the above link is probably the only one you’ll need, however if for any reason your installation fails, it’s normally due missing AD entries or a Schema upgrade failure. The below links should help get you back up and running.

Prepare AD Domain and Schema for Exchange 2013 CU13 – by Chris Harris at Enterpriseit.co

Recreate Arbitration Mailboxes – By Jaap Wesselius at Jaapwesselius.com.

Fortunately, running a setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms should be the only thing you need to do however Jaap goes into great detail should further configuration be needed.

Now that you’ve read our tips on carrying out an Exchange 2007 to 2013 migration, browse our support archive for more helpful advice.