do you need to have domain controllers inside a exchange resource forest?

Yes, a resource forest is another AD forest which requires DC's. Please see the following links. After reading let me know if you have further questions. http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/planning-architecture/deploying-exchange-resource-forest-part1.html http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998031.aspx Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

I'm agree with Tim. The base of exchange resource forest is have a domain controller. Your expertise never fails to impress!

Okay thanks Tim. I read these and maybe you can help me with this design scenario. We currentlty have two forests that are part of a external trust. They are mirrors of each other in that each forest has its own exchange 2003 sp2 server, 2008r2 dc, 2003 dc. They are connected by a point to point partial t1 of 350K data bandwidth. We are buying two new exhange 2010 servers to replace the 2003 servers and want to move from two separate exchange orgs into 1 exchange 2010 org without removing the current account forests. I think we can use one of our current forests as the resource forests instead of creating a third forest to be the resource forest? If this is true would the site that was not housing the resource forest be able to authenticat to its exchange server if the link went down between the two sites or would there need to be an additonal domain controller put on site there for this to happen?