Steps for adding Exchange 2003 front end to Exchange 2000 site

Had an interesting conversation with an IT guy named Scott who was planning migration of his existing Exchange 2000 front end onto new hardware running Exchange 2003. For the time being, at least, he's keeping the back end/mailbox server on Exchange 2000.

He wanted some input from me on his plan of attack, so I gave it, although I didn't really have much to add to what he was already doing based on my cursory search of the Microsoft website. There just wasn't a lot out there that I could readily see to cover this situation.

Basically, his plan was to demote his Exchange 2000 box off of front end status and build up the new Exchange 2003 box and make it the new front end.

I suggested that he try to deploy the new Exchange 2003 box while the old 2000 box was still running as a front end, but of course, Exchange 2003 put up a flag and wouldn't let him continue until all his front ends were Exchange 2003.

At this point, I recommended that he upgrade his current box to Exchange 2003, but for one reason or another (he didn't elaborate, but I have to assume he had good reasons) he couldn't go that route.

Anyhow, he ended up doing exactly as he planned. He unchecked the "this server is a front end server" box in the Exchange System admin window on the Exchange 2000 system and built up his new server.

Now he's sitting pretty with a new Exchange 2003 front end/Outlook Web Access (OWA) box and his existing Exchange 2000 back end/mailbox system.

So to recap...if you have older hardware and software running Exchange 2000 that won't, for one reason or another, upgrade well to Exchange 2003 and you want to start upgrading your infrastructure to Exchange 2003, you can do so but you have to take your Exchange 2000 front end servers down to normal server status first by unchecking the proper config box.