Exchange 2003 in Native mode
I had a question from Andy the other day. Andy is currently running Exchange 2000 and is hoping to migrate to 2003. They are also going to be upgrading the AD from 2000 to 2003. He wanted to know whether they would be best to go into native mode before migrating to Exchange 2003 and if so can they remove the ADC first?
Well Andy, I would recommend switching to native mode only after all of the computers that may be running 5.5 are deleted from the organisation. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272314 and http://support.microsoft.com/?id=829577 for information. The Exdeploy wizard allows an easy upgrade from Exchange 2000 native mode to Exchange 2003. See this article to walkthrough the process. http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Upgrade_Exchange_2000_to_2003.html . If you’re not running 5.5, I’m not sure what purpose you have your ADC for? If you have no 5.5 or NT 4 in the organisation, then it doesn't matter in which order you do the switch to native mode. I’d do it after the successful installation of Exchange 2003. See chapter 3 and 6 in the Deployment guide for more information. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/Exchange/guides/Ex2k3DepGuide/90258468-cd8d-485f-90b2-08d499a48147.mspx