Exchange and Active Directory 1

[shannonlapekas]

I have three established networks that will be connected using layer 3 switches in the next month. The company does not want to combine the active directories together for the three networks. They are currently using a program called Mail Daemon to get e-mail. They want to migrate to an Exchange server and have all three active directories connect to that one Exchange Server. Is this possible?

 

[pschwarz]

Yes. I did this awhile back, with Exchange 2003 on an Windows 2003, multiple forest enviroment. This will get you started. I do not encourage this from a support perspective, as well as disaster recovery complexity.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...logies/directory/activedirectory/mtfstwp.mspx

The user names will need to be different on the different forests.

 

[shannonlapekas]

One way I was thinking about doing this would be to create a trust between my domains and then add the trusted domains to my Exchange server. Is this a good way to approach it?

 

[pschwarz]

Yep. Create trust, then create user in exchange forest, then disable account, then "associate with external account" (seem to remember this in "Exchange Tasks", though has been awhile). Keep in mind, Microsoft does not recommend this (perhaps not even supported), as well as the primary/exchange domain should be a 2003 native domain, as well as Exchange 2003, in native exchange mode. The external forest/domain does not have to be 2003, but can be 2000 in native mode (as I have done). You may run into some "snaffu's", if the user names in the diffent forests are the same name (I gave them different names and set them up in their own OU). The only reason I did this, was because the smaller forest only had 5 users that needed Exchange access. From a support stand point, consider your TCO outlook. The will also be some DNS issues. Check out the link above.

 

[pschwarz]

Another resource I had used.

http://enterprise.state.wi.us/home/...How to set-up an Exchange Resource Forest.pdf