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Upgrading - what order? - 20.May2005 7:04:00 AM

infox

Posts: 2
Joined: 20.May2005
Status: offline

Hello everyone.

I'm looking to migrate from Windows2000, Exchange2000, and ISA2000, to the current versions. I'm wondering what order to do this and would be grateful for your thoughts.

Office G has our main server with Exchange (gServer), and a little webserver (webServer). Office E has a little fileserver (eServer).

Both offices have an ISA Server (gISA, eISA), which handle the inter-office connection by VPN over SDSL. There is no hardware firewall.

Both offices also have a Windows2003 "server" (gSystemAdmin, eSystemAdmin) for Ghost, WSUS, McAfee Protection Pilot and so on. I haven't done anything with Active Directory.

gServer and eServer are DCs.

Office G has c.40 staff, office E has c.15. All PCs run XP SP2. All servers and PCs are fully patched. I can take the whole system down for a couple of weekends over the summer if necessary. I can probably reduce the Exchange volume to around 10Gb.

I use Remote Desktop to control all these servers. The two offices are an hour apart by car :-)

Do I have to upgrade both eISA and gISA to ISA2004 at the same time, or can ISA2000 and ISA2004 talk over VPN? Should I upgrade all servers to Win2k3 first, let them settle, then do Exchange then ISA (or ISA then Exchange); or upgrade a server at a time with Win2k3 and its app?

Any and all pointers, tips, experience, suggestions, questions welcome!

[ May 20, 2005, 07:22 AM: Message edited by: William K Rankine ]

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RE: Upgrading - what order? - 21.May2005 10:11:00 AM

tshinder

Posts: 47659
Joined: 10.Jan.2001
From: Texas
Status: offline

Hi William,

You should first learn about how the ISA firewall will work before deploying them. The firewall model is very different with the new ISA firewall. Once you have that down, I would upgrade the DCs first, then the Exchange Servers, but there will be a lot of research for those upgrades too.

HTH,
Tom

(in reply to infox)

Post #: 2

RE: Upgrading - what order? - 21.May2005 1:58:00 PM

infox

Posts: 2
Joined: 20.May2005
Status: offline

Thanks for your response, Tom.

Sorry, I don't seem to have made myself clear. At this client there's just one Exchange server, which is the (only) DC in the main office. The branch office also has single DC which is the fileserver for that office.

I've already upgraded servers at other clients from Win2k/Exchange2k to Win2k3/Exchange2k3, so I'm comfortable with that side of things. I'll be familiarising myself with ISA2004 when I upgrade my own "personal" SBS2003 with it shortly.

So, my main question is still, which order - specifically, in this setup, when should I upgrade ISA2000 to ISA2004 - last? Or before upgrading the servers on which ISA runs to Win2k3? Or before Exchange?

All PCs use the firewall client, and all use Outlook2003, in case that makes a difference.

And can ISA2000 in the branch office happily VPN to an upgraded ISA2004 VPN in the head office, or should I plan to upgrade both offices' ISA2000s to ISA2004 at the same time?

Thanks in anticipation

[ May 24, 2005, 04:20 PM: Message edited by: William K Rankine ]

(in reply to infox)

Post #: 3