We have a box running Exchange 2003 in production that we need to upgrade the hardware. I know I could set our new box up and do move mailbox for all the mailboxes, but is there a safe way to name the new box the same name and then move the databases over to the new box? The log and database partitions are SAN attached. I have seen this documented in disaster recovery scenarios, but not for hardware upgrades. We have a lot of MAC clients that would need to be manually visited and reconfigured if we could not name the new box the same name as the old one.

Thesewould help you Restoring Exchange Server 2003 to alternate Hardware Recovering a Failed Exchange 2003 Member Server Using the Disaster Recovery Switch

Hi, You may notice /disasterrecovery switch which is frequency for setup a new exchange server if old exchange server crashes. this switch is also used for moving Exchange Server 2003 to new hardware. Below is a article from TechNet Library How to Move Exchange Server 2003 to New Hardware and Keep the Same Server Name Note: /disasterrecovery switch not works for Clustered Server.(see KB323016) Jason