Okay people my situation is quite complex and we're having all kinds of trouble. We are deploying a new Exchange 2003 Server (1st one) in a domain called CITYHALL. Our old Exchange 5.5 server is in a domain called WEB. We are trying to eliminate the WEB domain. What is the best way of doing this and migrating all the mailboxes to the new server. They are in separate domains, is this a problem? We have both servers in the same Exchange Organization but we are unable to put them in the same administrative groups for obvious reasons (No Active Directory in the WEB domain.) Should I create a new exchange organization for the CITYHALL domain so I can use the Exchange Migration tool, or is there a way to get them to coexist in the same Administrative Group so that we can move the Mailboxes and Public Folders to the new server? Please help, we're kind of stuck at this point. Thanks, Andrew

Andrew, Here's my take on what you might be able to do from a high level. 1. Don't actually create a new NT domain and just stick with WEB. 2. Install EX2003 within the WEB domain 3. Migrate all mailboxes and public folders over the new server 4. Remove the last EX5.5 from the environment as per MS recommendations 5. If you have any NT4 Domain Controllers... get rid of them if you can and install Win 2003 DCs 6. If you have any Win2000 Domain Controllers... upgrade to SP2 as a minimum. (preferably only have Win2003 svrs). 7. At this point, now upgrade your AD Domain and Forest to 'Native' mode 8. Once AD is in Native mode, you have the ability to rename your domain to CITYHALL. Good luck! Hope this helps with your research.

No need to over-complcate things. Use ExMerge to export all 5.5 mailboxes to PSTs. Import the PSTs in 2003, using ExMerge again, and you are done. Public folders need to be done manually, use any account that has all rights to get them into a local PST and then put them back on the 2003

Exmerge is good for this purpose but if you wish to keep all your NT groups, account etc from the WEB domain and bring them across into AD in the CITYHALL domain then do as I've discussed. Otherwise, if you don't care about the previous NT domain, accounts and settings then do what Marc has suggested.

True, but in most cases, with such an 'old' setup, you tend to inherit allthe misconfigs too and I try to avoid that. I all depends of course of the complexitivty of the setup, I would not recommend the ExMerge way for a setup of a few thousand users. On the otherhand, it is also possible to use the AD connector of course..

Thanks for all the input guys. Both domains are already live so I can't rename WEB. I think we're going to start clean and migrate the mailboxes. The WEB domain is very old and we feel that this would be the best route.