planning a new exchange installation

[bookouri]

We have a new server being delivered soon and Im going to be expected to plan and install an exchange server but I have never had a chance to work with exchange. We have an existing AD forest with one domain but Im thinking about creating the exchange server as a new domain so I can avoid any possiblity of anything happening to my existing forest. We only have about 400 users so my tentative plan is to install the new server as its own domain, get a few of us migrated to it once it is stable, test it, get used to exchange, work all the kinks out and then gradually migrate the other users...

I would appreciate any suggestions, comments, suggested reference materials... Im pretty much flying in the dark here...

 

[brontosaurus]

I've done a bunch of E2K installations and have never had a problem with the Schema being updated by Forestprep/Domainprep, but if anyone else has, please chime in. In my opinion, you're making an awful lot of work for yourself even though it's "only" 400 users. Sure, you can migrate eveyone to the new domain, but don't forget their workstation accounts as well. You'll need to set up a trust between these domains so your users can actually log into it. Otherwise, you're looking at manually removing and adding all your PC's into the new domain. I guess it's easy for me to say this from the outside looking in, and I do understand and appreciate your concerns, but I hate to see you killing yourself unnecessarily.

 

[bookouri]

Thanks for the comments, that makes me feel a little bit better about maybe adding exchange to the existing domain. I know how "deep" exchange works itself into AD and I just have this fear of ending up with a network that nobody can log on to....

 

[bookouri]

BTW, our current domain is not named based on our actual "internet" name. For example if our fully qualified internet name is

http://www.mycompany.com

and I want mail to eventually come in to bob@mycompany.com but our forest is currently mycompany.southeast do we HAVE to create a new domain/forest to match the mycompany.com name scheme?

 

[brontosaurus]

nope. the only thing that matters is your MX record and your exchange server being told to accept mail for mycompany.com.

 

[cybersaur]

Yeah I'd just add the new E2k server to the existing domain. When we added one to our domain and migrated the Exchange 5.5 mailboxes over I found a very helpful little guide on Microsoft's site called "The milk company".

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...hange/exchange2000/deploy/depovg/sixsteps.asp

It details several scenarios and lists a number of steps that need to be done for a relatively trouble free migration. Things went very smoothly for us. Just be sure your backup software is licensed and configured correctly for E2k once you complete the migration.



Trent
Network Admin

 

[DARKKESTREL]

For the question about how much exchange mixes with AD the answer is DEEP, beacuse it stores all its configuration, but you should not be affraid of that, the only things that I think that you should keep in mind are:

Make a backup of the system state of server containing the Global Catalog

Try to NOT install the Exchange Server in a server that is a Global Catalog / Domain controller (this is not exactly neccesary, but has proven to be useful when I was restoring a destroyed instalation of Exchange)

Make periodic Backups of the *.edb and the *.stm files

You should not have problems.

 

[bookouri]

thanks for all the feedback. I found lots of info that referred to 5.5 to e2k upgrades but since we never had 5.5 I didnt try to wade through too much of it. I do have a dedicated e2k server so I wont have to try to run it on a DC. One quick question... if I set up my e2k server, and it is NOT a DC, what effect, if any, will it have on my DC's if that machine is shut down, not on line, for a while?

 

[DARKKESTREL]

If your DC is down odds are in favor that you wouldn't be able to log in (not to mention the use of outlook) if you have a BDC you should promote it and it'll work fine