Migrating from Hosted Exchange

Hi there,

We're contemplating a migration away from Hosted Exchange to something based on Redhat 5. This is something I've never done before and was wondering if there exists a check list of things we'll need to cover before we even consider the move.

Currently everything we have is offsite other than an AD domain and the file/print server. Our websites are offsite as is our email, eventually we'll want to bring the websites inhouse as well but for now it's the email we're looking at.

My boss is a bit of an MS GUI freak so we'll be looking for something that looks the part. Obviously there's qmail and sendmail variants but if there's something out there with an easy-on-eye GUI then that's a bonus.

Has anyone tackled anything like this before?

Look at the web-based config managers - such as webmin. Whatever you do, it's clearly going to need to plug into the AD stuff, so my suggestion is to set up a system and get the account access working. That way you can then migrate services one at a time, starting with your essensial servides (DHCP, DNS, maybe file services) followed by your email system.

If it were me, I'd be trying to keep minor services (such as DHCP and DNS) on a seperate machine, put the email stuff on another machine, and maybe put the web services on a third. If you're using other stuff such as databases or file services, then maybe look at where they can be put best - they may even demand a machine of their own too.