Exchange - Merging/Synchronising GALs

[mee]

Hi All,

We're currently federating with another school. In the short term we will remain on two sites, however have a large amount of staff working and travelling across the two. In the longer term, we will end up on one site.

However, in the short term, I would like staff to be able to access e-mail address lists for staff and students at either site. Plus our distribution lists need to include people at both sites.

I'm looking for a product which will allow us to merge, and then continually synchronise address lists across both sites.

I've looked at Simple Sync and Quest Colliboration Services, however both are outrageously expensive!

Does anyone know of a cheaper product?

Thanks,

Mee.

[Geoff]

Is your AD hooked together? If so to what level?

[mee]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your reply.

No, AD is not hooked up together. We are able to access each others subnet. I'm aware we may need to create trusts across both domains in order to merge GALs, but that's as far as we're prepared to go at this stage. Don't want to look at merging domains just yet.

Andy.

[binky]

Have you tried Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager FP1?

[Geoff]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your reply.

No, AD is not hooked up together. We are able to access each others subnet. I'm aware we may need to create trusts across both domains in order to merge GALs, but that's as far as we're prepared to go at this stage. Don't want to look at merging domains just yet.

Andy.

What about putting both domains in a forest?

[mee]

What about putting both domains in a forest?

It's not something I'd be confident in doing without doing a lot of background reading. I'd have to look into it and find out what the pros and cons would be. It'd obviously involve lots of migrating. For now I just want to synchronise the GALs.

Andy.

[mee]

Have you tried Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager FP1?

I should have said; we're on Exchange 2003. I believe you need Exchange 2007 to use that.

Andy.

[klawd]

We host our own email system and had a similar problem. If you can get ports opened etc, you can tell outlook to query the LDAP of the other organization (and the GAL) I believe.

In our cases we couldnt get ports opened, and ended up creating a hack together job, that downloads the GAL, syncs it to a database and then removes/creates any contacts for the other ORG's users in our AD.

[tonyd]

Getting the ports for LDAP or Secure LDAP opened could be tricky, but most ISPs are happy to allow you to open up VPN ports. You can then open VPN tunnels between the required servers and access whatever ports you require that way.