Exchange 2003 Potential problem

[Badaz52]

Hi,

We are going to be upgrading our servers over the summer and as part of the upgrade I will be reconfiguring large parts of the network. The most notable is we currently have a parent domain and two child domains. I intend to consolidate both child domains into the parent as there is no good reason why there is any separation and going forward I believe a single domain is the best way to go for us personally.

Now we have an Exchange 2003 server that is installed as a member server within the parent domain but it is only configured for staff use and those staff accounts are on AD on one of the child domains. If I migrate the staff accounts into the parent domain and seeing as though the exchange 2003 server is on the parent domain anyway would this work or will it cause us major problems? the staff accounts will remain the same just be in a different AD.

If this won't work please could someone let me know what is the best way to make this happen as we need to go with a single domain.

Thanks
Adam.

[Edu-IT]

Just a side question, why don't you use this as an opportunity to upgrade to Exchange 2010 if you have the hardware and licensing to support?

[Badaz52]

Just a side question, why don't you use this as an opportunity to upgrade to Exchange 2010 if you have the hardware and licensing to support?

I could upgrade to exchange 2010 but wouldn't I still have the problem of the parent/child domain switch and what would be the best practice to achieve this and migrate mailboxes etc?

[Edu-IT]

It's my understanding that you can't do an in place upgrade from 2003 to 2010 so I was perhaps thinking you could do a completely fresh install of Exchange 2010 and then import back across all the data.

[sukh]

You can move the accounts in the parent domain and users can continue to use email without issues.

If you can, go for Exch 2010. If installing into the same AD forest, then you can simply move the mailboxes across from 2003>2010.

[towen]

Hi Badaz52;

The setup seems to be something of a school that I worked at some years ago... :-) one parent and two child domains, nope there is probably no reason why one single domain wouldnt suffice now - I also cannot see why you couldnt just migrate the accounts into the parent domain. Personally I'd also look at taking the Exchange Orginsation to 2010 as this will bring many benefits :-) at the last school as I was at we migrated to Windows 2008 and Exchange 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 using virtual servers.