Moving office

abakan

Hi all,

We have been told this week that our IT business will be moving office and I will oversee the move.

It not that far away but Ive been told it needs to be seemless.

We currently company share with another comany with the phones and mal server, some servers.

Has anybody any ideas of the pitfalls that I should be aware of or havent though of?

Currently I have to set up a new DC with all the users,
Transfer the phone number to the new building.
I have an interm mail solution in place until I get exchange up and running.
Fax and printing will be setup pretty quick.

So is it me or do it seem not to bad?

any thought appreciated.
ta

Sparks

Have you physically walked through the new place yet, checked power and ventilation and network access for the servers, checked power and network points for any APs needed, that sort of thing? Oh, and if it's an oldish building, make sure it's not listed. The amount of hassle that can cause is interesting in an academic way...

But don't think it'll be quick and easy

jamesd

Order your broadband line with your startic address for the new site.
Also have all the details ready to inform your host that you need your mx record repointed.

Puchase AV if necessary.
UPS ?

abakan

yes ive have walked through the new building, its ready to move straight into on a network level.
Moreso the move is just to transfer all our existing equipement and buy new equipment that the 2 companys shared and for a continue working as is on our new domain.

I never thought of a UPS. thats new on the list

Anti Virus - ive been trying to source this disk for the past week and nobody seems to know where the disk is or if we have a license.

There is already BB at the new site, today ill get the new static IP address.

M@21

I would suggest you get all users that are moving to make sure they have moved any files on their local desktop/ c drive etc (if used) onto their own shared folder on the server. Just in case anything happens to the systems in transit.
And make sure you have a backup of the server before moving, but that goes without saying anyway.
Any shared desktops that are not being moved should also be checked for data and user settings such as favourites / programs that will be needed in the new office.
Hope this helps.

irishgrover

and this one is probably obvious but I learned a very easy lesson in a very expensive way..

If you are running any network cables, and using a crimper, test the first couple of ones to make sure the crimper isn't defective....

this mistake ruined my life and sleep for a few days about 10 years ago

Static M.e.

I completed a move for 120 in June of last year from an old office to a new site, we had to wire & build everything from scratch.

First off how many people are you moving?

Do you host any websites? If so who looks after your DNS

Do you currently have your own DC running or is it shared?, if it is shared how are you sharing it?

Infact exactly what servers are you sharing?

Have you checked all the phone and network connections individually?
Are they all cabled, do they need switchs?

Phone numbers and such take 24 hours to transfer if nothing else is on the line and with the same telecoms company, same exchange helps alot here too.

Depending on your situation you can have everything in place for Monday morning when you open up again.

How are you planning on moving your servers, PC's & Monitors? Dont forget the time it takes to setup all the new equipment.

On handy tip is to label the current NIC's in use on each server before you move them.

Have you thought about your Routers\firewalls? Your firewall will need to be changed if your Public IP is changing?

Hmm begin the move on Friday @ 5 and plan on being fully setup for testing to begin on Saturday morning. Have a worksheet that you will use on every PC / Server to test everything is working. Have all your support numbers and out of hours numbers printed off incase your Phone systems or Comp Systems go down.

abakan

More good info, thanks a mil,

Were not moving as many as yourself. 10 users moving office.

We are sharing the DC under a different so I will need to set up a new DC under our new company name.
All network ports in the new building work. only a new building aswell.
All servers have been split apart from the DC.

Website is with our web hosting company.
We need to buy a new router alrite, but I think there is a nice Cisco one being bought

CCSL

Can be a bit of a pain moving the mailboxes to the new server but I have
used exmerge quite a bit to export the mailboxes to pst files and then re import on the new server.

Also adinfinitum is a great batch account mailbox creator but for small numbers a manual recreate would be fairly quick.

abakan

Yes, The move is on this weekend and things are coming together for me.
Cisco router is coming tomorrow.
New server with SBS 08 in place with exchange running.

I now need to export all IMAP account's to the new server, exmerge is what ill be using alrite

Truck is ready for thursday. Its gonna be a busy weekend to get everything up and running

CCSL

You cant run exmerge when logged in as administrator as there is an explicit deny rights assignment to the mailboxes.

Create another account and use the deligate control option in exchange system manager to grant that account all rights then you can use it to export all the mailboxes. Dont make it a member of the domain admins group as this will block it also.

If you are getting errors when exporting look at the log and this is the most common cause of the problem.

one more thing dont forget to change your mx entry to point to your new public ip address it takes 12-24 hours to roll out.