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Fitting the bill at Lancashire Constabulary
Lancashire Constabulary turned to Quest Software for help with its deployment of Windows 2003 & Exchange 2003 from NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5.
Like many organisations at the end of 2003, Lancashire Constabulary was faced with a migration project following Microsoft’s withdrawal of support for Windows NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5. At the start of 2004, the force had an urgent requirement to quickly and seamlessly move to Windows 2003 with Active Directory (AD) and Exchange 2003.
Lancashire Constabulary recognised that the best approach was to use the move to AD to reorganise its user structure more sensibly, which would add complications to the deployment. Using only native tools to perform the deployment would have required additional IT staff, which was not an option for the force. Instead, Lancashire Constabulary decided to seek a solution that would simplify, speed up and remove the risk of a failed AD and Exchange deployment with no downtime or disruption to the users. The solution would need to allow Lancashire Constabulary to run the old and new environments in parallel for a period of time after all elements of the deployment were completed.
Lancashire Constabulary also needed a recovery solution to protect both the Exchange and AD environments and remove the risk associated with human error. “Every month, dozens of officers move to different divisions or change roles. Realistically, we have to expect that a user, mailbox or public folder will occasionally be mistakenly deleted. This would present us with the problems of user downtime and no guarantee of manually reinstating the deleted object with exactly the same status as before,” explained Colin Fitzsimons, senior analyst programmer, Lancashire Constabulary.
The Quest solution
Having surveyed the market, Lancashire Constabulary turned to Quest Software to assist them with deployment to Exchange and AD, since they felt their solutions offered the best route to a seamless migration with no user downtime.
Lancashire Constabulary used Quest Domain Migration Wizard to perform a fast and straightforward move to AD, with Quest Reporter providing critical account information required prior to the deployment. Domain Migration Wizard is designed for complex deployment of AD in distributed networks. Geared toward distributed, enterprise-scale environments, Domain Migration Wizard delivers a comprehensive, easy-to-implement solution for Windows NT to AD deployment and Windows NT domain reconfiguration.
Quest Exchange Migration Wizard was used for the force’s move to Exchange 2003. Exchange Migration Wizard is an award-winning deployment and co-existence application for transitioning Exchange 5.5-based environments to new or existing Exchange 2000/2003/2007 environments, with ZeroIMPACT on resources and users.
Prior to the migration, Quest MessageStats, an Exchange reporting and analysis solution, provided Lancashire Constabulary with the account information they needed. In addition, Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange and Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory provided Lancashire Constabulary with the recovery solutions they needed to protect their new environment.
The bottom line
Reporter saved Lancashire Constabulary weeks of time, by gathering account information prior to the AD deployment. “For instance, there were accounts on old, replaced desktops that hadn’t been deleted from the NT 4.0 domain. It would have taken us weeks to collect this type of information manually, with no guarantee of some accounts not slipping through the net; with Reporter it took minutes.
Moving forward, Reporter will also help us to adopt a more proactive approach to AD management,” said Fitzsimons. Using Domain Migration Wizard to assist with its move to AD has saved Lancashire Constabulary money and time, and ensured that the deployment was straightforward and risk-free, with no user disruption or downtime. “With our complicated re-structure requirements, we could not have attempted the deployment to AD without the Quest solution. We have effectively saved money, as well as time by not having to employ additional IT resources,” noted Fitzsimons.
Lancashire Constabulary has saved time by using MessageStats. “MessageStats was fundamental to tidy up all the Exchange accounts and identify any duplicates prior to the deployment, saving us weeks of time,” said Fitzsimons. “During the migration itself, MessageStats saved us further time by identifying any issues that needed to be resolved.” Lancashire Constabulary continues to benefit by using MessageStats for proactive Exchange management including checks on mailbox space.
Despite some problems during the move to Exchange 2003, Exchange Migration Wizard provided Lancashire Constabulary with a risk-free deployment, involving no downtime or disruption to the users.
“Because we decided to perform a software upgrade in the middle of the migration, we encountered some difficulties and our move to Exchange 2003 took longer than expected. However, we would not have attempted the Exchange 2003 migration without the use of Exchange Migration Wizard, as it ensured no disruption for our users. It also enabled us to run the new environment in parallel with the old one, something that was vital during the deployment,” commented Fitzsimons.
Recovery Manager for Active Directory provides Lancashire Constabulary with time savings and the guarantee that any errors can be easily and quickly rectified with minimal user disruption. Lancashire Constabulary is equally positive about its use of Recovery Manager for Exchange. “Recovery Manager for Exchange provides us with peace of mind that any object, such as a mailbox, contact list or public folder, can be quickly and easily restored, without having to bring down the server and incur downtime – it’s a very clever product and provides us with huge time savings,” concluded Fitzsimons.
