Recipe9.1.Using the Public Folder Migration Tool


Recipe 9.1. Using the Public Folder Migration Tool

Problem

You want to quickly move some or all of the public folders housed on one server to another server.

Solution

Using a command-line interface

  1. Get the PFMigrate.wsf script. You can download it from the Microsoft tools center (http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2003/updates), or get it from the Support\ExDeploy folder on the Exchange Server 2003 CD.

  2. Identify the source and target servers; any folder contained in the source server's replica list will be added to the target server's replica list. You will use these with the /S and /T options, respectively.

  3. Determine how many folders you want to move. The simplest way to do this is to run PFMigrate with the /R option, which tells it to produce a report. For example, this command line will generate a report for the server named tornado:

    > cscript PFMigrate.wsf /s:tornado /t:tornado /r

    When you're adding replicas to a server, PFMigrate requires a folder count; when you're deleting replicas, it doesn't. This allows you to easily split large migrations into multiple phases.

  4. If you're not running the script on an Exchange Server 2003 server, you'll need to use the /WMI option to specify the name of an Exchange Server 2003 server, because PFMigrate uses WMI to get the folder data.

  5. Run PFMigrate from the command line. For example, to move the first 25 public folders from cyclone to hurricane while logging the results in c:\temp\pfmigrate-add.log, you'd use this command line:

    > cscript PFmigrate.wsf /S:cyclone /T:hurricane /n:25 /f:"c:\temp\pfmigrate-add.log" /a

    The /a option specifies that you want to add replicas from the source server to the target server.

  6. Wait for the folders to replicate (see Recipe 9.4).

  7. Once the replicas you want are present on the new server, you can remove the original server's replicas by rerunning PFMigrate with the /d option. For example, if you wanted to remove the first 25 replicas from cyclone after using the command line shown in step 5, you'd do the following:

    > cscript PFMigrate.wsf /s:cyclone /n:25 /f:"c:\temp\pfmigrate-del.log" /d

Discussion

PFMigrate offers a simple and straightforward way to migrate sets of public folders between servers. This is extremely common when migrating from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003, but it's also very useful when you want to consolidate public folders from wherever they are now to a central location. With that purpose in mind, the tool's behavior makes more sense: it adds or removes folders to the target server's replica list, then uses the normal replication mechanism to fill newly added folders with content.

Apart from PFMigrate's add, delete, and report modes, there are some additional options you may find useful:

  • The /SF option tells the tool to migrate the system public folders described in the introduction.

  • The /NNTP option specifies that you want the tool to skip subfolders of the Internet Newsgroups folder. This can greatly reduce the amount of time, and replication traffic, required to migrate public folder servers that are serving USENET, since you can just let the new server backfill via NNTP instead of through Exchange's mechanism.

  • The /Y option forces the script to run without prompting for confirmation of folder deletions; you'd normally use this with /d when you were scripting a migration across multiple servers.

Finally, there are some specific limitations on what PFMigrate can do:

  • You can only migrate folders in the MAPI TLH; because that's all Exchange 5.5 servers have, and because PFMigrate is intended as a 5.5-to-2003 migration tool, it doesn't support non-MAPI TLHs.

  • The source and target servers don't have to be in the same routing group. The original version of PFMigrate required this; that's because in mixed-mode Exchange organizations, moving mail-enabled public folders between routing groups can cause problems with email delivery. However, the version shipped with Exchange Server 2003 SP1 and later remove this limitation if you specify the /sc option.

  • You need Administrator permissions on the public folders you're moving, plus Exchange Administrator permissions on the target Exchange Server 2003 computer and on the Exchange 5.5 site or Exchange 2000/2003 routing group that contains the source folders you're moving.

See Also

Recipe 9.13 for working with system public folders, Recipe 9.4 for controlling folder replication, and MS KB 822895 (Overview of the Public Folder Migration Tool)



Exchange Server Cookbook
Exchange Server Cookbook: For Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server
ISBN: 0596007175
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 235

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net