Server...Upgrade?

[Beachnative]

I've been hired to help out with the IT and building maintenance, in other words a glorified janitor. I have some networking/admin experience but never set up a new network or updated one my previous boss did it. Now I'm looking for guidance.

The server at my present job is an SBS 2003, is a DC, has Exchange and it's getting ready to croak. I have a new server in front of me and the boss says to install Server 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. The box is a Dell T320 with a Intel Xeon E5-2430 2.2Ghz two 1T drives that will be mirrored and has 32 GB of RAM.

The office environment is a small office with 14 Win 7 Ultimate computers

Needed: A server for email, file storage and a DC.

I'm thinking after installing the OS have the new server join the domain as a secondary DC then promote the secondary to the master then remove the initial master.

This seems to be a long way to do this but would it be easier to do a fresh install , then import the Exchange data from the original server?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Option 1 (join server as secondary AD then promote) would be the best option as it retains the current domain structure. However, SBS server has, in the past, not played well with others, being intended as a stand-alone solution. So be prepared for some difficulties with getting the two to talk.

Option 2 (clean install then import from old Exchange Server) is the long way 'round as you would have to recreate the AD domain and have all the workstations join the new domain. New domain means new profiles on the workstations and either editing the registry to point to the old one or manually copying files from the old profile to the new. However, if you can't get SBS to play nice then it's your only option.

 

[choucove]

When we upgraded the DC at our local library, we were faced with a similar issue: Migrate the existing domain structure or start from scratch. In the end, I chose to just start from scratch and rebuild everything. This was for several reasons. 1) I was not there to know all of the details of how the original domain was created, and didn't feel 100% comfortable with how it was set up anyways. 2) Migrating the DC can sometimes not work quite right and I didn't want to be stuck "half way" and not know what to do from there.

In the end, starting from scratch also had another great benefit in that we could also go around and redo some things on the individual workstations and cleaned a lot of things up and fixed other issues that might be happening on individual computers. Basically it was a ground-up fix of the whole network and starting from fresh. Granted, we had a small number of end user devices like you are talking about here, this wouldn't be near as fun if you had a network with more than like 20 computers.

 

[Beachnative]

Great advice from both of you and thank you. Everyone saves all data on the server so I'm thinking the profiles issue should be minimal.

In the past I was the Sys Admin for a small WISP and colo in Fla, the owner would set up any servers. I was the monkey that would add email users and build shells for websites point IIS to the shell, troubleshoot DNS and FTP issues and climb communication towers to service equipment among other duties...

I feel like a fish out of water, the problem is we were using Imail from Ipswitch ver 8.22 with an IMGate and not Exchange....and there are so many questions to ask...


Got a minute?

For one, a user had a computer that was thought to be dead so she brought in her comptuer from home and has been using it for 6 months. I got the job fixed her old one so she could take her laptop home. When I switched computers for her and copied the profiles over, she opened up Outlook all her email was up to date.

How did that happen? Can someone give me a simple explanation on how that works?

 

[Beachnative]

Nevermind got it!