Forest Separation

[Guest]

Situation: Large organisation with a single AD Forest, multiple child
domains, each it’s own site.
Exchange 2000 organisation within the forest with multiple exchange servers
in child domains, each child its own exchange admin group (Site).
Requirement: One child branch (call it ChildA) of the forest needs to be
separated from the rest, including its exchange servers. Think of this as a
de-merger. ChildA does not share the same DNS name space as the forest root
and we need to keep the DNS name of ChildA the same so migration does not
look practical.
Proposal:
Install forest root server at ChildA physical site.
Sever physical connection between ChildA site and the rest of the forest.
Get root server at the separated ChildA site to size all root and forest
FSMO’s
Clean up metadata to remove all domains and DC’s no longer connected and
exchange servers and Administrative Groups no longer connected from the
ChildA forest. (A similar process will also take place at the central forest
to remove ChildA domain references)

Does anyone know if this will work OK. I have seen some news group postings
of people saying they have done this. I am reasonably confident that AD would
be happy with this, I an unsure if Exchange 2000 will be OK as the First
Exchange 2000 servers and first Administrative Group will be in the main
forest.

 

[Paul Bergson]

We did this and all went fine but at the time we were an Exchange 5.5
organization which (In this case) made things much simpler, but as long as
you have an Exchange server from the site I don't see why it won't work, but
alas I am not an expert on Exchange.

I have added the Exchange NG to see if you can get feedback from anyone over
there.

 

[Joe Richards [MVP]]

That will work but I would be concerned about future implications if the
companies remerge or try to use federation to communicate between them, things
will get confused.

--
Joe Richards Microsoft MVP Windows Server Directory Services
Author of O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition
www.joeware.net


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