Root Domain and Child domain Where best to place Exchange 2003

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Justin Thyme - 13 Sep 2006 23:00 GMT

Hello All,

We are in the process of combining two compaines network. under the external
domain for company, "externaldomain.com"

CompanyA has a exchange 2000 domain under the name intranet.doamin.com and
is using a POP downloader to retrive mail.
CompanyB has a exchange 2000 doamin under the name
company2.differentdomain.com and is using incoming SMTP from a registered MX

The descision has been made to use a root domain for the over all company:
"corp.domain.com"
so a new forest with the name "corp.domain.com" has been created, and a
child domain for each company

We will migrate as follows:

main domain = corp.domain.com

intranet.domain.com --> geoLocation1.corp.domain.com,
company2.differentdomain.com --> geoLocation2.corp.domain.com

The mail server that will recieve the mail will be located at geoLocation1
via SMTP
The sites will be connected via a reliable T1 leased line.
we would like to have the mail boxes located near the user (i.e mail boxes
for geoLocation1 at the geoLocation1 site, etc.), we would also like some
kind of redundency between the sites (using weighted MX records)

alll recepiants to should have the address : user@domain.com
Each area wants to maintain control of it's resources. (heard that one
before?)

My question:

Where is the best place to locate the mail servers at the root level, child
level or both

Thanks
Justin

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genius54m - 15 Sep 2006 17:17 GMT

hey Justin, I am currently working on a similar project: (Creating a root
domain and with three child domains containing exchange servers.) My question
is, are you planning to upgrade to Exchange 2003? If you are, you would be
able to utilize outlook 2003's cached mode feature and actually house all
exchange servers in geoLocation1.corp.domain.com. With the cached mode
feature enabled, the outlook client benefits significantly across network
boundaries. This is certainly something that has to be piloted. If sufficient
bandwith is unavailable, then having a mailbox Server in
geoLocation2.corp.domain.com would suffice, but according to microsoft's
recommendations and best practices, that will unlikely be the case. This also
allows for a more centralized setup and easier management. You would also be
able to delegate administration. Let me know if this is helpful.

> Hello All,
>
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
> Thanks
> Justin

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Justin Thyme - 21 Sep 2006 20:20 GMT

Thanks for the reply,

The plan is this,

- Setup trust relationships between the domains
- Moved the users of company A to the Exchange 2000 server of company B,
using a leased line between the companies for outllook access from A to B.

I suspect we will move the users from the old Exchange to the new Exchange
2003 once the new domain structure is up and running. We will not do an
inplace upgrade of the Exchange 2000 server.

So what has be requested is:

1 - geographical redundancy for the mail system. Meaning if one site fails
the other can take over.

I plan to weight the MX recoreds on external DNS for the external
domainname.com. So I figure that site A will recieve mail and route mail to
geographically located mail boxes. (A->B) if A fails the next MX recoreded
mails server will take over and route (B->A)

so the question is

GEO1 GEO2

root.ad

corp.domain.a corp.domain.d
exchange.geo1.doamin.com exchange.geo2.domain.com

or

GEO1 GEO2

root.ad

exchange.corp.domain.a exchange.corp.domain.b
geo1.corp.domain.com geo2.corp.domain.com

After a while I'm not sure what I'm talking about anymore!

Thanks

> hey Justin, I am currently working on a similar project: (Creating a root
> domain and with three child domains containing exchange servers.) My
[quoted text clipped - 61 lines]
>> Thanks
>> Justin

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