Migrating subscribers from Unity 4.2 to Unity 7.0

[bryantmarsh]

I am upgrading my Exchange 2003 environment to Exchange 2010. I have Unity 4.2 with about 340 subscribers integrated into Exchange 2003.

I have successfully installed Clean install of Unity 7.02.ES with Exchange 2010 in my lab according to the recently posted installation guide.

There are multiple tools available that I can use ie. DiRT, COBRAS and GSM.

I just need to know what is the recommended best practice to move my subscribers along with voice messages, greetings, etc.. from my Unity 4.2 running in parallel with my new Unity 7 in production after the migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.

[David Hailey]

For voice greetings, Call Handlers, etc. - you need to use COBRAS.

For moving users from one server to another server within the same AD domain, you need to use GSM.

So, GSM + COBRAS = you're good.

Hailey

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[bryantmarsh]

Hi David,

Thanks for the info. I have another question.

In preparation for the migration, I took the production 4.2 Unity and created a P2V in my lab on a VMware ESX3i host.

I am running in a different domain now, so I had to remove the unity server from the old domain and put it in the lab domain.

I switched all the services that run as the same unity accounts that are on my 7.X unity server. They are running OK.

My problem now is that I get >

ACCESS DENIED

Your Windows Domain Account [******\unityadmin] is not associated with a Cisco Unity Subscriber.

This is when I Launch System Admin.

Do you have a workaround for this?

I am thinking I might need to associate a windows local account to the administrator unity subscriber, then run the P2V again.

Then login as the local account when the vm is complete.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Bryant.

[David Hailey]

So, a couple things:

1) If you just want a workaround - try to login to Web SA using Unity Install.

2) I don't think you have a completely stable system.  Typically, if you change the domain for a Unity server - you have to run DiRT and a series of other steps that are well documented in the Cisco Unity Reconfiguration guide.  I'd look it up if I were you and take a look through.

Hailey

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[bryantmarsh]

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. I did find a solution to the access denied.

I ran the GrantUnityAccess -n *****\Administrator -s EAdmin from the c:\commserver folder.

That did the trick of launching the SA.

There were also a couple of issues I ran into after the VM clone.

You must rerun the permissions wizard to point the unity to the lab exchange.

You must also rerun the commserver/configuration setup/setup.exe and choose the proper exchange server.

Then I ran into a problem where the GSM would not give the option to "move mailbox".

That was fixed by sharing the commserver/stream files on each Unity server.

Now I cannot see the "destination" while running the "move object" utility.

This is because I dont have the cloned VM Unity 4.2 "Digital Networking" configured to be in the same dialing domain as the Unity 7 server as it appears in the SA.

I configured the dialing domain successfully and had it replicate through AD.

The Unity 4.2 server SA page can choose the new dialing domain, but when I go to save the settings I get the following error:

Page cannot be displayed.

HTTP 500,100 Internal Server Error - ASP error

Error Type:

ADODB.Recordset (0x8007203A)

Operation is not allowed when the object is closed.

/Web/SA/BodyAsp/LocDefPrfBody.asp, line 250.

Do you have any ideas on the fix?

Thanks,

Bryant

[David Hailey]

Bryan,

Well, all of that is actually pretty standard fare as far as procedures go.  At this point, I'm not exactly sure where your error lies.  The error provided seems browser-based.  What browser are you running to connect to the SA?

Hailey

[bryantmarsh]

I get the same errors on different browsers. I went to my Unity7 and accessed the Unity4.2 via http and the same results as running SA directly on the 4.2 server.

Just for experiment, I ran ASP dotnetfix for Version 2 on the Unity 4.2.

Both the servers are running the same version of ASP, but the errors persist.

I wanted to see the behavior of the Digital Networking on the production Unity 4.2 server and the pages display correctly, so I am thinking it must be either a permissions issue in windows or an IIS issue.

We never needed to setup a dialing domain in production because we only had one server.

Does cisco have any procedures that you know of to "reset" or reconfigure IIS for Unity?

Thanks,

Bryant.

[David Hailey]

You can find configuration details for IIS in the installation guide but they are only used if you enable SSL post-install.  You use them to verify the IIS config settings in the event that something breaks.  I wrote a blog on that but I don't think you really need to reconfigure IIS necessarily and my blog only focuses on the SSL-related configs.

Hailey

[bryantmarsh]

Hi David,

I am running the COBRAS export for Unity 4.2 under the unitymsgstoresvc account.

About 1 hour into the backup, I get errors:

(error) 70 (Permission denied) in procedure ExportSubscriberMessages of Module modMessages

(error) could not delete temporary message file - another process may have it locked:C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\COBRAS\Export\TMP_Msg\COBRAS_temp_Message.wav

(error) creating temp folder:C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\COBRAS\Export\TMP_Msg in SetupTempFolder on Module1:Permission denied

I have stopped the cisco security agent, and I have cleaned up by running DBWalker.

I am not sure if this is a show stopper. I let last nights export run to completion.

These errors start happening only at a certain subscriber in the export. I filtered out the subscriber and tried it again, but it starts about 1 hour in on a different subscriber.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Bryant.

[David Hailey]

This is actually an error related to COBRAS not being able to delete a temp file that is used during the export process.  As you can see, that temp file is located at C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\COBRAS\Export\TMP_Msg\COBRAS_temp_Message.wav which is in the COBRAS file structure - not Unity.  While I've not seen this particular error, I have some errors where COBRAS is being run on an partition that is running out of disk space or low on disk space.  If you're running from the Unity server itself and installed COBRAS on the C: drive,  you may have an issue of this type.  I would uninstall COBRAS and then reinstall it onto the D: partition of your server and attempt to run the backup from there.

Let me know how that works out.

Hailey

[bryantmarsh]

Hi David.

That was a good idea. But no luck. Getting the same permission issues. So there is no limitation to how many subscribers COBRAS can handle right?

Thanks,

Bryant.

[David Hailey]

I've done over 4000 so how does that compare to your task?

Sent from my iPhone

On May 20, 2010, at 5:47 PM, bryantmarsh

[cjosborne]

David,

In regards to this question I need to do the same thing but I need to build the unity 7 box to run in parrallel with the Unity 4.2 system.  From the install guide with a mixed enviroment of Exch 2003 and 2010 it says I should install the new 7x box with 2010 as the partern server but it then tells me to move the unitymsgsvc account box to 2010. If I do this then unity 4.x will most likely stop working. So my question is shoudl I install Unity 7 cleanly in the exch 2010 enviroment with all new service accounts and mailboxes ?  Will GSM still work then between the two boxes ?  Whats your opinion ?

Thanks

[David Hailey]

So, my first question is this - as this may change what you do upfront:

Is your intent to stand up the 7.0 environment with E2K10 and have it in CO-EXISTENCE for some period of time with your existing Unity 4.2 environment?  From what you are reading, that's the intent of this statement "I need to build the unity 7 box to run in parrallel with the Unity 4.2  system.  From the install guide with a mixed enviroment of Exch 2003 and  2010 it says I should install the new 7x box with 2010 as the partern  server but it then tells me to move the unitymsgsvc account box to 2010".  This is basically saying, "hey if you want to run 2 systems and have them coexist then this is what you need to consider doing first...."

OR

Do you intend to stand up the 7.x, get it integrated with AD/Exchange, and then start to move users over between mailstores?  If the latter, then I'm not sure that a straight COBRAS migration with GSM wouldn't work.   However, E2K10 has some unique requirements so we'd need to check there to make sure all is still well from the standard COBRAS operation perspective.

Curiousity question - have you considered skipping Unity 7.0 and migrating to Unity Connection?  Trust me, not an indictment of your choice - just curious.  CUC has a lot of stuff in the pipe that really make it the new de-facto messaging option for Cisco so just curious on if there has been any consideration there.

Hailey

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[cjosborne]

The intent is we have to migrate everybody to exchange 2010.  This is a UM enviroment and a until UC 8.5 is out then Unity is what we are stuck with.

So we have to have both Unity 4.2 and Unity 7 running because all users are in Ex 2003 but are going to have to migrate to Exc 2010. So should I build my 7 box as if its brand new with Exc 2010 as the partner server with all new service accounts / mailboxes ( none of the same ones as the Unity 4.2 box) if I do this will GSM work ?  If not I know Cobras should be able to migrate subscribers from Unity 4.2 w exchange 2003 to Unity 7 and then have the exchange people migrate their mailboxes.  Of course this would all be test ahead of time with test users. 

Whats your thoughts ?