We have gotten the task to set up a new communication and collaboration infrastructure for our department to work with both external partners, contractors and customers.
The old environment consists of an Exchange 2003 Server with OWA enabled, a Windows Sharepoint Services server 2.0 and a SQL 2005 server as back-end. All three Servers run on separate virtual systems hosted on two ESX 2.5 servers (1 for SQL and 1 for Exchange and Share Point).
Access control is realised through Active Directory where the Server hosting Exchange is also Domain controller.
The Systems grew over the past two years to accommodate new needs by the department. Unfortunately, the user managment was somewhat neglected and therefore a large number of accounts where no more used and therefore disabled, but never deleted. Also, many fancy applications came to help us simplify our work. They were soon abandoned because no one had time to manage them. They still are installed on the servers and idle around. No one was willing to remove the unused applications as the the Servers were already somewhat destabilized if you know what i mean 🙂
Unfortunately, the department that let us use the ESX-space informed us that they need the space themselves and that we would have to leave within 6 weeks. Yipee.
With this series I would like to document our experience while getting the new environment going. Maybe our mishaps can prevent someone else of doing the same mistake