We began our transition from Exchange 2003 to 2007 late last fall. We chose to go with 2007 at the time so we wouldn't be on the bleeding edge. The money budgeted for the 2007 mailbox server storage ended up being reallocated the first half of this year, and now we can't make progress until calendar year 2011. I had already built and deployed two 2007 CAS and two 2007 HT server roles, (1 each on two different Vsphere 4 hosts) late last fall. I've also patched them to SP3 last week. We are now looking to migrate directly to 2010. What do I do with the 2007 CAS & HT servers which are technically co-existing with Exchange 2003, but were never fully implemented without the matching 2007 mailbox server? Do I need to uninstall the Exchange 2007 roles on each server before deleting the VM's ? Is there a reason to keep them online until some stage of the 2010 deployment? Thanks!

Are the 2007 servers actually performing any functions or just installed (i.e. is email flowing through them or is OWA being hosted from 2007 servers)? If not, then just uninstall them (don't just turn them off). If you plan on going to 2010 and not moving to 2007 in the mean time and all users are still on 2003, I say uninstall the 2007 servers and make the migration to 2010 less complex.Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

Thanks for the reply, Tim. They are just installed, mail is not routing through them and we are still using the 2003 OWA servers. We now plan on going directly to 2010 and skip 2007 completely. All users are still on 2003, and only a few are on an Office/Outlook version later than 2003.

Sounds like my post eariler applies then. One thing to note, I would recommend upgrading everyone's Outlook client to 2007/2010 before migrating users to Exch 2010. If not you will have to either disable encryption on the Exchange server for RPC access or enable it on the Outlook 2003 client (can be done with a GPO). By default Exch 2010 requires it, and by default Outlook 2003 is not enabled for encryption.Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

Yes I agree with Tim , the best is to upgrade the Outlook before doing the migration of the maildata Because there are some issues related to Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2010 together I can just find one of the links I have saved about this area, have a look http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/23/454711.aspx Jonas Andersson MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | MCSE/MCSA Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog

Hi Jim, Some useful information for your to migrate exchange 2003 to exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Home Regards! Gavin

Is it feasible to only upgrade Outlook to 2007/2010 for Exchange 2010, and leave the other Office 2003 applications in place? What problems could we have with that scenario? Broken features, security patches, system repair, etc.?

Hi Jim, The issue seems office issue, you could post the problem on below forum, you would get more help from there. :) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/officeitpro/threads Regards! Gavin

I can't tell you how embarassed I am. Long story short, the 2007 servers were just turned off and the VM images are no longer available. The Exchange 2007, while not in use, was not uninstalled beforehand. What can we do to get Exchange 2007 'cleaned up' before beginning the 2010 installation?