SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration

With the addition of a windows mobile 6 device, windows 2008 with exchange 2007 makes a powerful combination. The main feature I like is the ability to issue a command on the server to wipe all company data off the device in the event it is lost or stolen.

On that note I decided to upgrade to Small Business Server 2008.

The process was very straight forward. I followed the small business migration guide available here on technet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc546034.aspx.

I had no issues except for permissions migrating my data over to the new server, which was a quick fix resetting and owning what tossed the access denied error.

My problem came when I tried to move over my email router for our CRM 4 deployment. For some reason the crm user for the forwarder mailbox is unable to authenticate against https:///exchange from the local machine. However from XP/2003, the user authenticates sucessfully. After many different methods of access from the new 2008 SBS server itself and my x64 Standard 2003 CRM Server, I chose to go with a suggested OS for the email router component. The OCS 2007 deployment was rolled out on 32 bit operating systems (cause it is all that is supported), so I installed the email router on the main server in the OCS topology.

I went to http://microsoft.com/downloads and grabed v1.2.1 of the Exchange MAPI collaboration objects and installed it on the server. Next, I installed the email router component, set my inbound and outbound rules, deployment info and bada bing, worked like a charm first try! Long story short- stick with the suggested, SUPPORTED configurations on this software.. ;)