Migrating from Exchange 5.5 Chat Server | Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Adminstrator's Companion

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If you are using Chat Server 5.5, the chat service in Exchange 5.5, you may have some settings or configurations that you want to migrate when you install Chat Service. The Chat migration tool enables you to create a new chat community on an Exchange 2000 server with the same name as Chat Server 5.5 that preserves most of the settings and configurations.

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The Chat migration tool will not migrate Chat Server 5.5 extension data. This means that if you had a profanity filter or a transcript extension with your Chat Server 5.5, you will need to re-create them in Chat Service.

The new chat community that the migration tool creates will be completely different from your Chat Server 5.5. In addition, if your Exchange Server 5.5 installation consists of one Chat Server 5.5 spanning two or more Exchange servers, you need to understand that this type of chat installation is not supported by Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.

Using the Chat migration tool, you can create chat communities on each of your Exchange 2000 servers. Each of the Exchange 2000 chat communities on each of the Exchange 2000 servers in your domain will operate separately, with separate user lists and channel lists. To migrate to Chat Service from the previous version, perform these steps:

Install Windows 2000 Server on your target machine, creating a new domain or configuring it as a member server of an existing domain. Remember that the source of the migration tool is the Exchange 5.5 server running Chat Server 5.5. The target of the migration tool is the server running Chat Service.

If you are installing Exchange 2000 into a group of Exchange 5.5 servers that spread Chat Server 5.5 over two or more servers, upgrade all of the machines to Windows 2000 Server first, creating a new domain or configuring each as a member server of an existing domain. All of the machines must be in the same domain.

The actual services used by Chat Service and Chat Server 5.5 have the same display name, Microsoft Exchange Chat. Therefore, if you are installing Chat Service on a machine on which Chat Server 5.5 is already installed, you must do the following:

Manually modify the name of service for Chat Server 5.5 on your Exchange 5.5 server.

Reconfigure the ports so that Chat Server 5.5 is not using the default port 6667 or the alternate default port 7000.

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If you do not complete these steps, Exchange 2000 Setup will fail to install Chat Service.

Install Chat Service on each target machine.

Run the Chat migration tool (Chatmig.exe) and specify the target. The target must be the administrative group to which you want to migrate.

After you run the Chat migration tool, a new chat community is created on the Exchange 2000 server with the same name as the Exchange Server 5.5 Chat server. It will have similar server, channel, ban, and class configurations. Until you are ready to fully switch over to the Exchange 2000 server, both chat services can run simultaneously.

If you are installing Exchange 2000 Chat Service on a new server, copy the migration tool from the \Exchsrvr\Bin directory on the target machine to the source machine. Run the Chat migration tool, identifying the Chat Server 5.5 directory as the source and the Chat Service directory as the target.

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You can check the Chatsetup.log file that the migration tool produces to see whether any problems occurred during the migration. This log will be located in the \Exchsrvr directory.