I hope this is in the correct forum. If not then if an admin could move it to the correct one I would appreciate that very much. I looked through the threads and couldn't find an answer the quite fit our situation. I'm just trying to get an opinion on the best way forward. We have been tasked to upgrade a remote 2003 AD domain/Exchange 2003 to a virtualized 2008R2/Exchange 2010 on new hardware. While we are building the 2008 VM environment the 2003 will be live, and then once we are finished we will travel to the remote site and deploy the 2008 VMs. We have no connectivity between the sites. To minimize travel costs we would like to perform as much of the install process locally.
1. Would the "transition" option or "restructure" option be best?
2. If transition should we just pre-build our 2008R2 servers and just wait till we get onsite, prep their forest for 2008, add them to the existing 2003 domain, dcpromo, tranfsfer FSMO roles, and decommission the old 2003 servers?
3. Or could we realize a significant onsite time savings by sending the remote site a VM image of 2008R2 member server, have their SA prep their environment for 2008, dcpromo the 2008R2 VM, and then send that back to us so we have a copy of the AD structure. Also would that be helpful WITHOUT being able to talk to the 2003 PDC which hosts all the FSMO roles? Or should we "seize" the FSMO roles here locally? If we seized it what would need to happen to the 2003 AD environment prior to us deploying the 2008R2 DC with seized FSMO roles?
4. If we had a copy of the the AD structure without access to the FSMO role holder, could we still build the 2010 Exchange locally and then move the mailboxes to it once we get onsite? http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17741
5. Or should we wait till we get onsite and then install a Ex2010 servr in "coexsistence" mode on the 2003 AD, move the exchange resources onto that, decommission Ex2003, and then bring that server into the 2008R2 domain?
Thanks and once again I'm sorry if this is in the wrong forum or has been already answered...