[beev]

Hi guys, I've been reading your forums for a couple months now and it's all been very helpful. You see, I'm just a lowly co-op student but it just so happens I've been delegated some pretty big responsibilities, including administrating our BES (Exchange).

I need to perform a pretty major upgrade, so I was hoping to get some advice to make sure there are no "gotchas" along the way, as I really don't want to look like an idiot.

We're currently running 4.1.6 and need to go to 5.0.3..

Here's the plan:

Prep:
1)Create an image of the server for backup purposes
2)Create a virtual machine of the current server for testing purposes

Execution:
3)Purchase a beefy new server
4)Use the server's image to do a "universal restore" (we have some neat software that can do this), essentially moving everything from the old server to the new
5)Upgrade from Windows Server 2003 to 2008
6)Install the service pack to move up to 4.1.7
7)Backup and upgrade the Database (this step is a real grey area for me)
8)Install the upgrade to 5.0.3

Note: The BES software and the database reside on the same server.

I'd love to hear your guys' feedback and feel free to ask for more details of course, I'm just a novice at all this right now. I would hate to embarass myself and render the server non-functioning.

Hopefully the famous KnottyRope can lend me some advice as well.