Well, as you probably know, make sure your data and system state is fully backed up before moving forward. The RAID card firmware may not be OK, as I recall when upgrading a server from 2000 to 2003 I had to upgrade the firmware of the PERC card so that it would interact with 2003. Can you not buy a new server, instead of upgrading an existing one?

Also, the driver will probably be OS specific so the Win 7 setup process may not recognise the card and won't see the drives. However, if you're prepared to simply perform a fresh install of Win 7, do a backup and buy a new Win 7 compatible RAID card and use that. But, I suspect that Brian's option of simply using a Win 7 desktop for Mercury may be the easiest option.

Hi Guys,

We intent to upgrade our old server hardware (as well as OS WinServer2003) within the next time to the current MS Server 2016 edition. That's why I'm presently collecting all necessary steps to move the services to their new place of residence, including Mercury, which is presently running fine in v4.80.149, and Pmail, running in v4.72572 german edition.

I have already searched for "Moving Mercury" in the forums, but most of the results are years old or do not describe the process completely. Also the Mercury Manual (I hold the manual Mercury/32 v4.51) describes only the installing and the automatic start by Mercury/32Loader.

I'm aware that Mercury is file based and that I can take the present Mercury subfolder structure (which also contains all Pmail user mailboxes) as it is, and move it to the new server, provided the folder structure is not being changed. So far so good. But now what I'm thinking about:

1. Since the new v5 is not released by David I have to create a Service which starts Mercury automatically on reboot of the machine. On our old 2003 Server I have different skeletons in the cupboard, means in the service administration of Windows Server, where I have tested different freeware service creation tools. At the end one tool works fine and the other bad tries are disabled since years. Is it also with WinServer2016 still the best way to install a 3rd party service creation tool to create a Mercury Service? What are your experiences and could anybody recommend a procedure or tool for automatic Mercury start?

2. Don't know whether my following  exposition is completely correct, but there is also still the issue with the GUI in the different sessions or desktops. When Mercury is automatically started and I'm locally logged-on at the server, I could see the GUI of Mercury. But when connected via RDP (with the same user account data) the Mercury GUI is disappeard. This is well known and as far as I know also this behaviour should be improved with the new v5.  

But because 95% of my log-ons are being carried out via RDP, I stop and kill the "local" Mercury process and restart the service manually when logged-in via RDP for the first time after reboot. From then, the GUI is always available at all RDP sessions, irrespective from which machine I access to.

Has anybody in the meantime a better practical solution for getting acces to the GUI from any log-ons?

3. Our server will get a new server name and IP address. Mercury is not configured as our MX server. It is only relay server. Incoming mails will be collected by Mercury-D via POP3 regularly from our ISP mail server and all outgoing mails are being sent by Mercury-C to the ISP mail server. Do I have to change any Mercury configs? And I think I have to change the path to the mailbox directory of Pmail, isn't it?

Hope anybody has some recommendations or own experiences in in this regard so that I can save some try and error cycles  ;-)

Cheers

Joerg

Hi Joerg,

I know that we are using Mercury in very similar environments but I unfortunately can't help you with this.  I have always had Mercury running on a dedicated PC instead of on the server.  When I first set it up my thinking was that my server was to be solely a file server.  The only shared app that ran off of it then was Pegasus Mail.  Not much as changed since then except the hardware and OSes.  As you know, replacing the Mercury PC itself is a breeze.  Just make a copy and keep on going.  This method also eliminates the need to run it as a service.

[quote user="Brian Fluet"] I have always had Mercury running on a dedicated PC instead of on the server.  When I first set it up my thinking was that my server was to be solely a file server.  The only shared app that ran off of it then was Pegasus Mail.  Not much as changed since then except the hardware and OSes.  As you know, replacing the Mercury PC itself is a breeze.  Just make a copy and keep on going.  This method also eliminates the need to run it as a service. [/quote]

Hi Brian,

Yes, a dedicated PC would save a lot of these issues. But on the other hand  you have another machine to maintain. Additionally such a standard PC is not intended for 24/7 service and insofar I'm afraid that Mr. Murphy visits us just when I'm on vacation or not in the office. Further, after a power failure (takes place around 2 times a year) the mail service must start independently and automatically - that's why my ask for a run as a service.

We are a small company with 12 persons. The main server is Domain Controller, File Server and Mail Server, has redundant power supplies, RAID1 for the system partition and RAID5 for the data including Mercury and Pmail and User Mailboxes. Works fine since many years and I'm able to sleep at night. But now it's time for renewal. And because of the Domain Controller, I have to setup a new DC first, followed by transferring of the DC Active Directory Database to the new server. Only then I can downgrade the old server from a DC to a ordinary server. But when the new DC is configured, I'm not able to rename it subsequently to the former name of the old server. But I do this only one time every 10 years [:S] and that's why any recommendations or better any experiences in this regard are very welcome.

[quote user="Joerg"]Yes, a dedicated PC would save a lot of these issues. But on the other hand  you have another machine to maintain. Additionally such a standard PC is not intended for 24/7 service and insofar I'm afraid that Mr. Murphy visits us just when I'm on vacation or not in the office. Further, after a power failure (takes place around 2 times a year) the mail service must start independently and automatically - that's why my ask for a run as a service.[/quote]

You are correct in that it is one more machine to maintain, but Windows update only.  It's running Win7 now so that is done on demand.  I'm afraid of what this is going to look like once Win10 is forced upon us.  Anyway, the BIOS is configured to restart after a power outage (last state), auto-login is enable, and Mercury is in Startup.  The PC is one of the oldest ones in the office and runs 24/7.  The only time it gets restarted is after a Windows update.  I understand the peace of mind of having it on the server but I sleep well at night and can relax on vacation too.  [ip][:)]. 

BTW, its' striking how similar our setup is.  My company recently grew to 14 people, I run similar RAID configurations with the server performing similar tasks.  I run a second server as a mirror for redundancy.  Actually, I have a co-worker who is way more experienced than I with server OSes so my life is a little easier with him maintaining the servers.  He's clueless about Mercury and PMail though so that's all on me.  Hope some folks can give you some pointers on the transition to the new server and that it all goes smoother than our last replacement.  We really struggles with getting the two servers so stop fighting over who had DC and DNS control.  I'm glad you won't have to deal with that.

What about cleaning up your old server of all the software except Mercury, and then converting it in a virtual machine to be run on your new hardware?

Best regards

Filippo

[quote user="Filippo72"]What about cleaning up your old server of all the software except Mercury, and then converting it in a virtual machine to be run on your new hardware?[/quote]

Hi Filippo72, thanks for your reply. But I'm not a friend of virtualization. Until now I do not understand the sense of VMs for simple single server applications. Ok, where internet hosters offer dedicated servers, then they could setup VMs to save hardware, or if you need different OS environments for testing or as a "sandbox" or something like this. But not for my single Domain Controller with additional Mercury installed.

[quote user="Brian Fluet"]...  It's running Win7 now so that is

done on demand.  I'm afraid of what this is going to look like once

Win10 is forced upon us.  Anyway, the BIOS is configured to restart

after a power outage (last state), auto-login is enable, and Mercury is

in Startup.  The PC is one of the oldest ones in the office and runs

24/7.  The only time it gets restarted is after a Windows update. I

understand the peace of mind of having it on the server but I sleep well

at night and can relax on vacation too.[/quote]

Hi Brian, I'm thinking about using your way, means still using the old server for Mercury (after downgrading it from Domain Controller). But first I have to remove Server2003 and install Win7Pro, provided Win7

fully supports the RAID Controller on the old server. Dell wrote that

this (old) controller is max. supported by Win Vista. I think I have to

try this.

Finally I could rename this server back to the origin (including old IP) and could simple copy Mercury thereto again, and that's it. You wrote, that one of the oldest machine is operating Mercury at your site. Ok, it doesn't matter whether Mercury needs some seconds more or less for processing and filtering mails. The users don't take in it. But what about the response time in case Pmail (one central instance for all users installed) is also situated on this machine? Further, at the end of a year I have users with nearly 2 GB in different mail folders. How long will it takes in future until Pmail and all folders are loaded every day in the morning with all users? The number of users and the amount of e-mails are increasing more and more and I have to plan for the future (up to 25 users).

Our present server has an Intel Xeon CPU E5320 @1.86 GHz with 4 GB RAM, connected via GBit LAN. Alternatively the other old server, usable for Mercury, has an Intel Xeon CPU E3110 @3.00 GHz with 4 GB RAM.

Joerg,

The Win7 PC I have running Mercury also runs POPFile, ClamAV and handles our remote banking needs (via a browser), nothing else.  Pegasus Mail is located on a server as are the mailboxes.  I don't know have a clue as to what processing needs are required by multi-user Pegasus Mail install but I can't imagine it amounts to much since winpm-32.exe only gets invoked from that machine but runs locally.  As for the mailbox sizes, I recommend keeping the mailboxes on the server for ease of backing up.  The Win7 PC never changes except for Windows updates so I do a new backup only after making a configuration change or a ClamAV upgrade.  BTW, the Pegasus Mail submission queue is also on the server so the Mercury PC does not need to be accessed by any other user or machine.  I used to manage it using Remote Desktop Connection although I rarely do that anymore because of a random black screen issue that I think is caused by video card incompatibility.  Luckily our server room is adjacent to my office so it's not an inconvenience to go to the machine itself.  Our two servers and the Mercury PC are connected to one keyboard and monitor using a KVM switch.

[quote user="Joerg"]

[quote user="Filippo72"]What about cleaning up your old server of all the software except Mercury, and then converting it in a virtual machine to be run on your new hardware?[/quote]

Hi Filippo72, thanks for your reply. But I'm not a friend of virtualization. Until now I do not understand the sense of VMs for simple single server applications. Ok, where internet hosters offer dedicated servers, then they could setup VMs to save hardware, or if you need different OS environments for testing or as a "sandbox" or something like this. But not for my single Domain Controller with additional Mercury installed.

[quote user="Brian Fluet"]...  It's running Win7 now so that is

done on demand.  I'm afraid of what this is going to look like once

Win10 is forced upon us.  Anyway, the BIOS is configured to restart

after a power outage (last state), auto-login is enable, and Mercury is

in Startup.  The PC is one of the oldest ones in the office and runs

24/7.  The only time it gets restarted is after a Windows update. I

understand the peace of mind of having it on the server but I sleep well

at night and can relax on vacation too.[/quote]

Hi Brian, I'm thinking about using your way, means still using the old server for Mercury (after downgrading it from Domain Controller). But first I have to remove Server2003 and install Win7Pro, provided Win7

fully supports the RAID Controller on the old server. Dell wrote that

this (old) controller is max. supported by Win Vista. I think I have to

try this.

Finally I could rename this server back to the origin (including old IP) and could simple copy Mercury thereto again, and that's it. You wrote, that one of the oldest machine is operating Mercury at your site. Ok, it doesn't matter whether Mercury needs some seconds more or less for processing and filtering mails. The users don't take in it. But what about the response time in case Pmail (one central instance for all users installed) is also situated on this machine? Further, at the end of a year I have users with nearly 2 GB in different mail folders. How long will it takes in future until Pmail and all folders are loaded every day in the morning with all users? The number of users and the amount of e-mails are increasing more and more and I have to plan for the future (up to 25 users).

Our present server has an Intel Xeon CPU E5320 @1.86 GHz with 4 GB RAM, connected via GBit LAN. Alternatively the other old server, usable for Mercury, has an Intel Xeon CPU E3110 @3.00 GHz with 4 GB RAM.

[/quote]

Enter your 2003 service tag on Dell's support site and under the Driver section check for a Dell Driver OS Pack for 2008. If one exists, you may be able to use a driver for the RAID array. Which RAID card do you have installed?

[quote user="Greenman"]Enter your 2003 service tag on Dell's support site and under the Driver section check for a Dell Driver OS Pack for 2008. If one exists, you may be able to use a driver for the RAID array. Which RAID card do you have installed?[/quote]

Hi Greenman,

Thanks for the hint. I'm aware the DELL Service Tag and the opportunity to check for driver updates at DELL's website.

Our old server #1 has a RAID controller PERC 6/and the old server #2 a SAS 6/iR.

While for the first controller DELL offers an "Integrated Firmware Update Package for Microsoft Windows" (don't know whether this is usable for all Windows Versions), for the second controller only an old firmware update is available, which we already got. But anyway. I hope that the RAID drivers are not so important for Windows itself because it is "seeing" only one drive and not the RAID group behind. I have to try it.