Exchange 2K3 and AD Split

[Fred Yarbrough]

Our sister company is wanting to split off from us and form their own forest
and Exchange 2K3 site.

We have 3 domains in our W2K3 Functional Level forest (Root, DomainA,
DomainB).
Root is a dedicated forest root domain.
DomainA is our company's domain and host the Exchange 2K3 site for the
forest.
DomainB is a sister company's domain and their mailboxes live on our
Exchange 2K3 site.

How is the best way to accomplish this with minimal impact on their 170
users?


Thanks,
Fred

 

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

Buy a domain migration tool and migrate them to a new virgin forest.

 

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

You'd need an Exchange migration tool too; most vendors sell the domain and
Exchange tools together in one package.

Microsoft has tools to help you with this, but you asked for the "best way".
You can have success with the free Microsoft tools, but they're more work
and you're more likely to miss things.

 

[Fred Yarbrough]

Thanks Ed. We have just went through an Exchange migration from 5.5 to E2K3
from our old NT4.0 domain to a new W2K3 domain and forest. Our migration
went really well with minimal issues.

I was looking for some basic steps on how one would proceed with this split
since it is somewhat different from our previous migration. I would think
that it would be easier since we are splitting off a domain while
maintaining the same OS.


Thanks,
Fred

 

[Diego Pereira]

Hi Fred

How you doing?

The process of migration of this resources is the same when you're joining
two companies, but in reverse way.
What you need to do is create a new forest and prepare to accomplish the new
Exchange Server organization.

Then you need configure forest trust relationship between you and sister
company.

With ADMT you move users, computers and other objects and for exchange
migration you need 2 tools:
1) Exchange Migration tool to migrate mailbox resources from your
organization to the new org - It's important that you migrate the all
mailbox enabled objects before to proceed this step;

2) Inter Organization (Inter Org) - to replicate all public folders to new
org (system and user P.f).


I'm sending some documents to help you.

To migrate AD:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/activedirectory/admt.asp

To migrate Exchange:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FD-FE7D-42AD-B621-45F974ED34C0&displaylang=en

regards.

Diego Pereira.

 

[Fred Yarbrough]

Thanks Diego!

This is good and gives me a place to start.

Thanks,
Fred

 

[Jorge_de_Almeida_Pinto]

Our sister company is wanting to split off from us and form
their own forest
and Exchange 2K3 site.

We have 3 domains in our W2K3 Functional Level forest (Root,
DomainA,
DomainB).
Root is a dedicated forest root domain.
DomainA is our company's domain and host the Exchange 2K3 site
for the
forest.
DomainB is a sister company's domain and their mailboxes live
on our
Exchange 2K3 site.

How is the best way to accomplish this with minimal impact on
their 170
users?


Thanks,
Fre

Create a new forest and exchange org.

Migrate all objects and resources (data and mailboxes) to the new
forest and org.

For migration you can use ADMT, ADC, Exmerge. See if it meets your
needs. Otherwise you may need to buy a third-party tool like DMW or
QMM from Quest. There are other third party migration tools however

 

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

You could actually do this by breaking apart your domain and Exchange
organization into two separate networks, and then seizing the FSMO roles on
the side that doesn't have them. On the A side you can delete everything
having to do with B, and vice-versa. However, I think this could end up
very ugly, and it might be too easy to delete the wrong things. Plus, one
side will not have the right domain and organization names, and those aren't
easy or necessarily possible to change.

You really ought to think of this as an interorganizational migration.