exchange in parent company AD

[Murugs]

Hello

We are a company having our own separate AD- windows 2003.
Our parent company is now talking about to merge their AD with us. Basically our AD will disappear. I am sure they will grant me proper permissions for creating new users etc..all they want is a single global AD worldwide in their offices.

Both of our offices are connected via MPLS T1 lines and networked. But we have our own separate email domains. Their email is on lotus notes and ours hosted externally. Just before this AD merge project we had plans to move to exchange 2007 in Jan 09. Now I have to do this AD merge. Will I be able to do exchange 2007 if our AD gets merged. I am more comfortable in having my own AD and implementing exchange 2007. If I dont have a choice what questions should I be asking the parent company for the exchange project.

 

[58sniper]

Yes, you can still implement Exchange 2007 when you're in a child domain. Certain requirements exist, like having the parent company extend the schema for the forest.

But it's not only possible, it's documented by Microsoft.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[Murugs]

58sniper - thanks for your answer.
I have more clear understanding and need help.

My parent company domain - parent.com hosts the ERP application where the login credentials is based on AD.

my company domain - mycompany.com + host file server + users access the ERP in parent company

So basically a user has 2 separate login accounts..to login and access file server etc..they use mycompany.com AD account..to access the ERP app they use parent company AD account.

for the ad merge project, the plan for the parent company IT folks is not a child domain creation..but basically to merge mycompany.com into parent.com..so mycompany.com will not exist anymore.

But I dont want to do this as it creates lot of work on our side and we are not ready for it. Also if we merge AD's my dream of exchange 2007 might get slim as there will be one root forest and I have to be dependent on them for permissions etc..Also I am not sure exchange will work in the first place.

Can we do trust between 2 domains and will that make life easy.

Also is there any other way for us to replicate our AD into their AD and have my users use just a single AD account..Sorry I am not an AD expert also.. Please tell me how do I convince my parent company IT folks that I would like to keep the 2 forest domains separate and not do this AD merge project.