Email migrations can become very complex especially when they are cross-forest migrations. I am well into this migration and should be able to write a follow-up article soon. The bottom line for me is: – What’s you level of comfort with configuring, operating and troubleshooting new components in your environment? – How much time do you have to prepare for the migration? – What is management’s tolerance for business interruption? Once you, can answer these three questions, you should be able to decide which tool or which tool not to use for your migration. I know this is not a direct answer but it should for m the base of the questions once you start talking to vendors.

/Ivor

I assumed I had to upgrade the Address Lists to Exchange 2010 in order for Exchange 2010 users to use them. Does the Address List upgrade remove the Exchange 2003 Address List or leave it intact for Exchange 2003 users – I can’t find any evidence of this…So one would assume that when you upgrade an Address List to Exchange 2010 in an Exchange 2003-Exchange 2010 transitional environment it would be accessible by both Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2003 users though in order to make changes to it you would need to do this via Exchange 2010 ?

I will create a test Address List on Exchange 2003 and Upgrade it to Exchange 2010 and see if an Exchange 2003 user can still see it..

Yes, this is an interesting question and my lab is in transition as we speak. However, with that said, in Exchange 2003 the Recipient Update Service is used to update address lists. This means that now all the data for the address lists are stored in AD. In Exchange 2010, the RUS is no longer required and the data for all the address lists are stored in AD now. If you convert the address lists to Exchange 2010 while still maintaining Exchange 2003 servers in the same org., the changes made to address lists may not be visible in the Address Lists maintained by the Exchange 2003 servers. I don’t have a lab to prove this at this time. I do know that you cannot edit the Address List on the Exchange 2003 servers once they have been converted. Is there a compelling reason to convert the Email Address policy and Address Lists before decommissioning the last Exchange 2003 server?

With regards the particular issue of Address Lists and EMail Address Policies can I not just upgrade them now in Exchange 2010 as it will be some time before we migrate the other sites to Exchange 2010. If I do this doesn’t it just mean if I want to change/create new address lists and email address policies I’ll have to do this on the Exchange 2010 server – in other words if I create a new address list or email address policy on the Exchange 2010 server won’t it still apply to those whose mailboxes are still on Exchange 2003 servers ? ….or will I have to wait until all Exchange 2003 servers have been replaced ?

The command results in the below error:

Invoke-Command : Cannot bind parameter ‘RecipientFilter’ to the target. Exception setting “RecipientFilter”: “Invalid f
ilter syntax. For a description of the filter parameter syntax see the command help.
“(Alias -ne $null -and (ObjectClass -eq ‘user’ -or ObjectClass -eq ‘contact’ -or ObjectClass -eq ‘msExchSystemMailbox’
-or ObjectClass -eq ‘msExchDynamicDistributionList’ -or ObjectClass -eq ‘group’ -or ObjectClass -eq ‘publicFolder’))” a
t position 40.”
At C:\Users\Administrator.NEWABSMACHINING\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Exchange\RemotePowerShell\abs-exchange.newabsmachin
ing.com\abs-exchange.newabsmachining.com.psm1:43929 char:29
+ $scriptCmd = { & <<<< $script:InvokeCommand `
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (:) [Set-GlobalAddressList], ParameterBindingException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterBindingFailed,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.SetGlobalA
ddressList

will work