Exchange 2000 and /forestprep /domainprep

[Saltin]

Afternoon fellas.
I am currently in the process of setting up exhange 2k in a native mode 2k domain. We obviously use Active Directory.

I am not the "head guy" here, but I have formal training in Exchange 2000, which the older guys do not.
The fellow who installed the first exchange server (in the forest root/parent domain) did not run the Forestprep switch first. Nor did he run the domainprep switch.
I have control of a child domain, and when I installed the second Exchange box, I did run the /domainprep switch beforehand.

My question is... can we still run the /domain and /forestprep switches on the root, even after Exchange has been installed? Or, (more likely I think), will we need to start again from scratch?

Any advice/input would be greatly appreciated

 

[Woodie]

From my (limited) experience...

The forestprep part extends the AD Schema to a *significant* degree, and only needs to be run in a forest once. (The schema is the same for the entire forest). Not sure how (if?) Exchange would work w/o the schema extensions. (Limited functionality??)

I'm not sure what DomainPrep does, other than it's not the Schema stuff. I would think that you'd have to run that for each Domain (in the forest) that you install an Exchange server into. I would think that it populates certain AD (Domain) information about Exchange, and that an Exchange server will be available, within that particular (child) domain. Not sure how Exchange works when you install it into different domains, within a forest. (We are installing all the Exchange servers within a single domain (1 of 4).)

--Woodie

 

[Saltin]

Thanks for the input.
I am pretty clear on how the switches work and what changes they make. I know they are necessary for a properly implemented Exchange organization. The real question is... can they be run after the fact? Or do they have to be run beforehand, no exceptions?

 

[Woodie]

No idea....I defer to your superior knowledge.

--Woodie

PS-- g/l