Server Solver

Exchange: Migration Misstep?

Exchange migration seems to be missing a step or two.

• By Sekou Page
• 09/06/2005

Question: I have a customer with Exchange 2000 SP3 installed on a Windows 2000 member server with SP4. All the domain controllers are W2K with SP4. I've run the /forestprep and /domainprep from the 2003 server cd. My dcdiag and netdiag looked good. When running the upgrade I get:

"The component "Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration Services" cannot be assigned the action "Upgrade" because: - The active directory schema in not up to date. You must run the /forestprep /domainprep switch. If you have already done this with the current version of setup, then you must wait for replication to complete"

I've checked to make sure that the attributes weren't mangled. I've also run the repadmin /showreps and all the DCs in the different sites are showing successful replication.

I thought it may be a permissions problem, so I checked to make sure the account I logged onto had enterprise, Exchange and schema admins rights. Those are OK.

Is there anything I've might have missed? Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Not much for this error on Google or newsgroups.)
—Tod S.

What is the history of the environment?
Although not always possible, it is nice to know what the environment has been through prior to attempting any upgrade. What migration method will you be using? Are you using performing an in-place upgrade or a swing migration? Has the server been upgraded before from a previous version of Exchange? Knowing a bit more about the history of the system you are working on will often help you to identify any “skeletons in the closet.”

Is your current environment healthy?
You mentioned running a few tests such as repadmin and checking that attributes weren’t mangled, but how “pure” is your existing environment?

• Is the current Exchange ORG already in Native mode? An Exchange 2000 ORG already in Native Mode will more likely have less issues upgrading to an Exchange 2003 ORG since all legacy components will not be allowed to exist in the native environment.
• What were the results of other tools such as dcdiag, nltest and netdom? Running dcdiag on your domain controllers can often identify issues that you’ve overlooked with their health. Running “nltest /dsgetsite” in particular can ensure that your sites are configured properly prior to an upgrade. Finally, using netdom to query and validate your FSMO roles will also be crucial to ensuring each of the role holders is operational and accessible. And then there’s DNS… although it doesn’t sound at first glance like this is the issue validating your DNS health is absolutely critical to a successful Exchange deployment.
• Do you have any conflicting software on the server? For example, it is usually not recommended to have software like Microsoft Office on an Exchange server, since this can cause issues with installation of certain components like Microsoft Search. SharePoint Portal Server 2001 and Exchange 2000/2003 should not be installed on the same server as well because of conflicts. It's recommended in general to keep Exchange servers (and any other production server, for that matter) free of any software that is not required or may conflict.

Did the Forest Prep and Domain Prep operations really complete successfully?
When upgrading to Exchange 2003, Microsoft now includes a tool call OrgPrepCheck that will validate whether or not the Forest and Domain Prep operations have completed successfully. In addition to this, you can also use ADSI Edit to manually check for specific attributes. See Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 274737, "How to Verify That ForestPrep and DomainPrep Completed Successfully in Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003" for more information on the OrgPrepCheck utility and manually validating using ADSI Edit.

Can you upgrade your domain to 2003 first?
You also mentioned that you will be installing your Exchange 2003 server on a Windows 2000 member in a 2000 domain. Although this is a supported configuration, I wonder if there are issues in general with the domain that might be more clearly revealed when attempting to upgrade the domain.

Although technically you can upgrade to 2003 by doing Exchange before your domain, many organizations choose to upgrade their domain first because the operation is typically less disruptive than an Exchange upgrade. In addition, some features (such as RPC over HTTPS) are not available without Exchange running on Windows 2003 in a 2003 Domain. If possible, upgrading to 2003 may either shed additional light on your problem or eliminate it all together.

Hopefully, one or more of these tools and suggestions will help you to resolve your issues upgrading to Exchange 2003. Best of luck with your migration and please don’t hesitate to write me with more information about your environment once you have it.

Reader Challenge
We’d all like to think that installation wizards make things easy; just hit “Next” a few times and wait for the blue progress bar to finish. But we all know that it doesn’t work out this way all the time.

What are some of the strangest reasons you weren’t able to install or upgrade an Exchange server? Send your stories to me and I'll publish the best ones in my next column. I'll also choose one as a winner, who will receive a copy of Bill Boswell's Learning Exchange 2003, courtesy of Addison-Wesley.

Let’s think out of the box here… so nothing like “I was missing the NNTP required component” or “I didn’t upgrade the first server in the site.” We’d like to see just how tricky a supposedly “simple” process like an install can be!