Need to cram in as much about exchange 2003 as possible

I wont go into details but my co-worker(friend)died a few days ago.My co-worker managed all of our exchange 2003 server related tasks and problems.I was starting to be trained on what to do but obviously thats not going to happen as planed.We do have other techs from our other sites that our going to help out and train me some when they can but I really really need to learn as much as I can on my own.I do have some experience with server 2003 and AD,so I'm not completely green going into this but I need to bring my skills up to speed quickly.I've found two books from microsoft that look promising and are linked below.Id like some feed back from any one that knows if these books are any good or any one that know of any other sources.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Exc...5432161?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177510531&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Exc...5432161?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177510531&sr=8-3

Exchange 2003 is not hard to manage, is there something looming up ahead that you have to know about, in regards to moving servers or putting in new ones or something that you are worried about?

Day to day managing the server is something that you can handle in a day of hands on playing with it.




(Setting up a new forest and a new server from scratch is totally different but still cake with it's little installation checklist deal)

Sorry to hear about your co-worker.

I have not used either of those books for Exchange 2003. A year ago I migrated to EX 2003 from 5.5 and used the following book for the migration and setup.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Exc...5914236?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177519065&sr=1-6

As always its good to get several different books to gain knowledge.

DorianBrytestar said:

Exchange 2003 is not hard to manage, is there something looming up ahead that you have to know about, in regards to moving servers or putting in new ones or something that you are worried about?

Day to day managing the server is something that you can handle in a day of hands on playing with it.




(Setting up a new forest and a new server from scratch is totally different but still cake with it's little installation checklist deal)

Click to expand...

Right now its hard to say specifically if new servers are going to be coming up or not with everything thats going on right now.My concern is more so that if we loose a server and need to get a new one asap,I'll be the only one onsite that can get things going.

I don't do much management but have some basic knowledge of exchange 5.5, 2000, and 2003. One key thing is to make sure you do a backup of the mailbox store (database) before applying any major updates or hotfixes.

Aside from that I google most of the issues, or browse Microsoft's KB articles for resolution to issues as they come up. Part of providing good tech support isn't knowing everything (how could you). It's the ability to find and impliment the fix.