Domain Consolidation and Exchange 5.5

[Guest]

Hello everyone.

In order to improve our Active Directory administration and because the size
of our organization doesn't require a complex structure of parent and child
domains we've dicided to consolidate all child domains into only one (all
child domain's users migrated into the parent domain). We are using ADMT ver
2 for this purpose.
Everything has gone just fine with all child domains, but we have a concern
about the last one: an Exchange 5.5 server is present and has the mailbox of
the users in that domain.

What could be the best practices to migrate this server to the parent
domain? What could be the best practices to do this?

Any comment would be appreciated. If there's any questions, please let me
know.

Thanks a lot

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

Are the machine and Exchange service accounts in the child domain also?

If you're talking about only one Exchange 5.5 server in the Exchange
organization, I'd recommend you take a look at the following procedures.

XADM: How to Move Exchange Server to a New Computer That Has the Same Name
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;155216

The "How to Change the Exchange Server 5.5 Service Account" white paper is
available
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266041

I'd recommend changing the service account first. As the white paper says,
it's not dangerous as long as you don't delete the original service account.
Don't try to remove any permissions from the organization, site or server
until you're happy that everything's OK with the new service account.

Once you've changed the service account, you can then follow the first
article. If you have spare hardware available it's a good idea to use it.
That way you have a fall-back plan in case things don't go according to
plan. Remember to install the latest Exchange 5.5 service pack (SP4) and
any hotfixes (such as http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841765).

Preparation is the key. Read the articles above carefully, take your time,
and make sure you take backups and I'm sure everything will go just fine.

Hope this helps

Oli

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your answer.
Yes, both Exchange Service accounts and Exchange machine are in the child
domain, and an important data is that the machine is domain controller too,
not the only one because I have another DC in the domain and that would help
so I can demote the one that has Exchange first.

I have an Exchange server 2000 in the parent domain which has the mayority
of mailboxes, but I'm not planning to migrate mailboxes to this server. They
coexist in different sites of the same organization.

"Oli Restorick [MVP]" escribió:

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

You're welcome.

Since there are other servers in the same org, I would double-check these
plans in one of the Exchange newsgroups. I've only ever done this in a
single-site scenario. This is especially true if you are running ADC
(Active Directory Connector). Alarm bells are ringing for me with the
mention of Exchange 2000.

You should be OK with the box being a DC. It's not ideal (and I think
you'll find the white paper states this as "out of scope of the document").
This being the case, I would definitely use additional hardware so that if
things go wrong you can safely revert back to the original setup.

I've done a similar migration (including migrating off a DC), but that was
without Exchange 2000/2003 in the picture.

Regards

Oli

 

[Guest]

Ok, Oli.

If you can, let me know about your research and the Exchange News Group
you'll check this case.

Thanks a lot again.

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

Hi there

I think there may be a language barrier here. I was suggesting that you
should repost your question to one of the Exchange groups. For example,
microsoft.public.exchange.design, looks to me like a suitable group.

Hope this helps

Oli