Monitor, Migrate, and Deploy Exchange (Continued)

Managing your Exchange environment includes more than configuring profiles and creating distribution lists. Have you ever been asked for a list of everyone in a particular distribution list? SmartR can help. Through Microsoft's XML engine you can produce reports in many formats, including Comma Separated Value (CSV), HTML, and XML. SmartR works with either Exchange 5.5 or Exchange 2000.

Heroix's Message Monitoring and Management module allows you to monitor all aspects of Exchange and Lotus Domino servers. You can configure this module to fix some problems as they're detected or notify you of critical system states. For Exchange you can gain information on mail traffic by domain, server, and site; performance of Message Transfer Agent operations; replication activity on the directory store; and use of system resources by Exchange processes. For Lotus Notes/Domino, you can track HTTP request load, concurrent users, numbers of dropped user sessions, changes to the database access control lists, and database activity and replication failures.

Aelita offers migration services to help your organization move from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 as well as make the prerequisite switch from Windows NT to Windows 2000. Aelita has developed the ZeroIMPACT approach to migration. This involves the use of several tools for pre-migration analysis, migration tasks, and post-migration cleanup. The Controlled Migration Suite consists of the Domain Migration Wizard and the Enterprise Directory Reporter. The Domain Migration Wizard targets enterprise-scale environments and offers project-management capabilities as well as actual migration tasks such as user migration. The Enterprise Directory Reporter performs pre- and post-migration analysis to help you identify potential problem spots in your migration plan before you begin. The Server Consolidation Wizard migrates files, shares, and printers from one location to another while preserving all the security settings and ownership information. The wizard features RegWalker technology, which updates your Windows 9x and 2000/NT clients to point to the new location so network changes are transparent to the users.

Aelita's Exchange Migration Wizard has pre-migration reporting capabilities for detailing organizational structure and site configuration. It includes a data-migration component that allows you to transfer large volumes of data from Exchange 5.5 servers to Exchange 2000 in a rules-based, unattended fashion. Single-instance storage is preserved, saving you space. One of the most important migration tasks is directory synchronization between Exchange 5.5 and Active Directory. The wizard is especially designed for enterprise environments and the challenges they face.

This wide variety of tools can ease your migration to Exchange Server and provide a wealth of messaging resources to help your business.