Two domains, Two Exchange server, one primary SMTP Address ?
I am trying to figure out the best approach for the following scenario which is due to happen very soon between our group of companies. Domain1 has Exchange 2007 with approx 180 mailboxes (soon to be moved to Exchange 2010 servers) Domain2 has Exchange 2003 with approx 1500 mailboxes. We need to create a domain trust and allow the domain to share calandars, address books etc. However we need to give the users in both domains the same Primary SMTP (domain1 and domain2 both have firstname.lastname@domain3.com email addresses). Obviously the easiest way is to just move all users to domain2 but we at domain1 really need to keep our own exchange servers for various reasons (BES, Unified messaging etc) Any suggestions on the best way to achieve this ? Thanks in advance.
July 25th, 2010 12:31am

You cannot share calendars, contacts, etc across Exchange forests unless they are both 2010. Free/Busy sharing is possible, but nothing beyond this. Your next question is about setting up a shared address space. This is very doable. See here: How to Configure Exchange 2007 to Route Messages for a Shared Address Space You state that the Exchange 2007 needs to stick around due to business reasons, and that’s why you can’t just collapse into 2003. What about the reverse? Can users be migrated from 2003 to the 2007 forest? Are you saying both forests need to stick around forever? If the 2003 forest needs to stay forever due to non-email reasons, perhaps have all the 2003 users migrate to linked-mailboxes in Exchange 2007? That will give them the benefit of Exchange 2007 without the loss of other forest resources. If none of this helps, please provide more background. Mike Crowley Check out My Blog!
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July 25th, 2010 6:54am

We will all be migrating to EX 2010 (another forest just been added to the mix) within the next 6 months so this will be perfect for the interim as we only have a month to get it setup and i think migration to 2010 will take a little longer. One question I hope you can answer: DomainA MX - Priority 10 DomainB MX - Priority 20 DomainC MX - Priority 30 If domain A is offline (server issues or ISP off) then DomainB receives email. Because domainB cannot contact DomainA will it send out NDR's for users mailboxes that are stored on DomainA or will it store the emails until DomainA is back online ? Thanks
July 26th, 2010 6:56pm

There are a lot of moving parts and components in a shared-namespace and coexistence environment. Be sure you do your reading before you just take my few comments here. Personally, I would not want to build a solution that provides some sort of round robin fault tolorance across exchange forests! this is WAY too much complexity. Especially for 6 months. Add more servers to the exchange org you want to protect. As you mentioned, if the destination forest is offline anyway, why would you want your mail queuing somewhere in another forest? They should stick with the submitting server until you're back online. If you expect a mail outage to last >48 hours, you can change dns during this crisis. Mike Crowley Check out My Blog!
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July 27th, 2010 4:19am

Hi, The message will be stuck in the Domain B until it's expired. In order for the domain B to tempory hold the email before the Domain is online, you should set the expiration timeout of the message to be processed. Allen
July 27th, 2010 11:15am

Thanks for your input guys this will help until we are all up on 2010, although I suspect that things will change over time and we will all be in the same forest (so much easier).
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July 27th, 2010 4:16pm

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