Lessons Learned

The SBS 2008 getting started wizards assume that the server will be in a Class C subnet (i.e., subnet with a mask of 255.255.255.0). Furthermore, when you run the Connect to the Internet wizard, the wizard specifically looks for your Internet gateway at specific addresses in the 192.168.x.x class C subnet. So what if you’re migrating from an existing SBS 2003 server that doesn’t match one of these assumptions?

In the case of your existing server being in a subnet other than 192.168.x.x, no problem. When you create the answer file, you’ll plug in the IP addresses for the existing server, the IP gateway, and the new server into the Answer File Creator so that the migration setup can do its job. In the case of a new installation, the Connect to the Internet wizard will fail to automatically detect the router and you’ll be able to enter the information manually.

But if your network is on anything other than a Class C subnet, migration is not going to work. You will have to temporarily configure the network into a Class C setup to get the initial migration working. After that, you can modify the network settings to go back to your other network configuration, but the migration setup requires a Class C configuration in order to work.

Hopefully this is going to be one of those exceptions rather than a rule, but there it is in case you run across this.

SBS 2008 includes the default message store limits for Exchange 2007 - 2GB per mailbox. But it imposes this limit in two places that you will need to know during a migration.

1. The Exchange Message Store has a 2GB limit at installation time.
2. The Standard User Role has a user quota for Exchange of 2GB.

If you are migrating a system that has users with mailboxes over 2GB, you need to address both of these items. Adjusting the quota for the message store is fairly straightforward, and you actually won’t be able to complete the Move Mailbox portion of the migration until you adjust this setting if you have mailboxes with more than 2GB of data in them. But that’s the time you should also go in and either adjust the Standard User role to remove the 2GB quota, or create a new role based on the Standard User role that does not have the quota enabled.

Unless you want to force the user to shrink their mailbox size to under 2GB.