Upgrade Unity 2.4 to 3.1 with Exchange 5.5 Off Box

[swittner]

Customer currently has 2 Unity servers (2.4.6) connecting to a single Exchange 5.5 store. We need to upgrade Unity in stages if possible.

We will be installing Unity 3.1 on new MCS 7847 servers and connecting to the same Ex 55 store.

I have read and reread the upgrade procedures using the Export and Import utilities, but do not feel comfortable with the Unity Uninstall. Since I have 2 unity servers connecting to the same Ex 55 store, will the uninstall remove ALL Unity "stamps" or just on the users for that Unity server?

Would using raw mode access to the Ex 55 be a better solution? We have around 70 to 100 users on each server.

The customer would like to be able to fall back to their existing Unity setup if we encountered any problems.

Just need some guidance.

[lindborg]

The Uninstall only removes the stamps on users that are associated with the local Unity server, it leaves subscribers and locations from other Unity servers in the site alone. We have many sites that have multiple Unity servers in the same Exchange 55 sites or 2K routing groups so this is a common need.

Upgrading in stages isn't really going to fly very well, though... the import/export is designed to do it all in one shot. If you want to bleed a few folks over at a time then you can't use import/export, you'll have to lose all those subscriber settings and simply delete a few users off the old box and import them as new users on the new box and have them reconfigure their greetings, notification settings etc... there isn't a "per subscriber" export and import capability.