Upgrade from stand alone VM only to failover Unity

[RICK CROWSON]

I've got a customer who currently has Unity 4.03 VM only with exchange 2k on the same server. They have purchased 2 new hardware platforms so they can do failover. I have several questions:

1- Since the new primary and failover unity servers will be integrating with the customers exchange server, does the AD schema still need to be extended? What I'm getting at here is if the customer already has exchange hasn't the schema

previously been extended OR is the schema extension on the Cisco Unity CDs specific to Unity?

2- When I restore the backup from the old unity to the new unity w/failover, how will the subscribers and old messages get populated onto the new exchange/active directory? Dirt restore is only ran on Unity. Since the primary/failover unitys need to be member servers. It is not clear if I can even do this, or do I need to recreate the subscibers from scratch?

3- I have one possible option that I am entertaining using the old unity server. Since the old Unity serveris already configured for AD and exchange. Would it be possible to make the 2 new servers member servers of the old servers domain running AD/Exchange. Backup the old server using dirt. Either stop or uninstall unity on the old server. Install unity on the new servers and restore to the new servers? Or would I need to wipe out the old server and install exchange 2k and AD from scratch?

any help is appreciated.

thanks

Rick

[lindborg]

1. Yes, the AD schema extensions Unity applies are specific to Unity - you need to extend the schema. This white paper talks about what the extensions in AD are used for:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/products_white_paper09186a00800875c5.shtml

2. DiRT will create users in the directory on the fly - it also uses Microsoft's ExMerge to migrate messages over if you want - check out the DiRT help file on its home page for more details on how it finds/creates users in the directory:

http://www.ciscounitytools.com/App_DisasterRecoveryTools.htm

3. I'm not sure I understand your scenario - if the new servers on are a different directory I don't get this. You should be able to just install the same Unity version you have now, use DiRT to migrate data over and then install a 2nd Unity server and run the failover configuraiton wizard and you're done. Check out the reconfiguration guide for more on how to migrate Unity configurations and do upgrades and the like:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/products_installation_and_configuration_guide_book09186a00802059b3.html

[RICK CROWSON]

The second scenario involves reusing the existing Unity server as the domain contoller/exchange server

for the 2 new unity servers. The problem is, the old server currently has Unity on it. If I wanted to use the old server, as opposed to using the customers exchange server, I would need to, I'm guessing, uninstall unity and only use the AD/exchange portion

of this server. Restore unity using dirt to my new primary unity box. Does this make sense?

thanks for your help