Hello,
We had a couple of issues in October with the Exchange Transport Service getting stuck in a "starting" state on our Exchange server, which resulted in 2 weeks of interrupted email use for our clients. We didn't actually fix the underlying problem but did get the server back up and running after restoring a previous version. Due to that we feel uneasy about the current setup and would like to migrate our data to a new Exchange server. <link to issues>
Current Environment
- Windows Server 2012 R2 (Version 6.3 Build 9600) running Exchange Server 2013 (Version 15.00.1497.023) virtualised (Hyper-V).
- ~1.3TB of databases split across public folders edb (which has 10K folders) and user mailbox edb. (roughly 650GB each)
- This server runs all of the exchange services
- PDC is on another VM
- DNS Server is on another VM
- 60 Users all using Outlook (2013 or 2016)
- All external e-mail is in / out via Mimecast cloud services.
We have purchased a new host server (PowerEdge r740) that currently only contains a WSUS VM.
We think we should create a new Exchange VM on the new host, and then migrate all of the data from the current Exchange server over. If we DIY'd it we would just install Exc2013 again.
Currently we only look after 1 site with 1 Exchange server, so we do not have a great deal of knowledge when it comes to Exchange migrations and would potentially be looking at getting a 3rd party to do / assist with the migration with us as spectators or us being the hands with 3rd heavily involved / on hand.
We'd also be interested in ongoing Exchange support/guidance, the company is UK based (South East) so it would be beneficial if the support came from people fairly local in case there was anything onsite that needed to happen. We have a similar arrangement with our phone supplier, i.e. we triage / 1st line / minor mods and liaise with the phone company, which keeps the client happy and reduces the time and FAFF overhead down for the supplier.
At some point we would be looking at re-evaluating the set up w.r.t. hosted Exchange, but we heavily use public folders so we would need to find a solution for what to do with those first.
If anyone has any advice or recommendations or able/willing to step into the 3rd party role, then the input would be great appreciated.
Thank you,
Dan
