Moving Mailboxes

[skialta]

The company I work for is currently looking to seperate the IT systems (Exchange 2003 Native/AD 2003 Native) that have been shared between the two companies (company A & company B). I'm going to create a new AD domain for the company B, but the question is how to seamlessly migrate the mailboxes to the new Exchange server for company B users. I was thinking about doing the following: 1. Creae new AD called companyB.com. 2. Create the user accounts for the users that are to be moved. 3. Create a trust between the two different Forests. 4. Then use Move the mailboxes to the new Exchange server. 5. Update the MX record for company B to point to the new IP (located in a different building, different ISP). 6. Remove the trust between the two Forests.

Does this seem the way to go or would everyone recomend something as basic as EXMERGE? My concern with EXMERGE is that the rights to the mail won't allow me to import into a new server in a new domain since the SIDs won't match.

Thoughts?

 

[dave2korg]

If you follow that method you may just need to readd perm's to the box's and let RUS restamp them up nice.

David McKissic
A+, Net+, i-net+, CCNA, CNE, CNA
Dell, Compaq, IBM, HP
Network Administrator

 

[skialta]

Is there a better way in anyone's opinion?

 

[58sniper]

Exmerge has nothing to do with SIDs. When you export the mailboxes on the current domain, they will be put into .pst files that match the alias.

When you import into the new domain, you have to use .pst files that match the alias on the new server.

So - if userA is bsmith on the "old" server, but "bill.smith" on the new server, then you might have to rename the .pst files before doing the import. No permissions issues here, other than the account you use to run exmerge. For more info on that, see
How to configure an account to use the ExMerge utility in Exchange 2000 Server and in Exchange Server 2003

Pat Richard, MCSE(2) MCSA:Messaging, CNA(2)