How do you change a domain name, as well as change exchange email

[Joemonkey]

I work for a company that is changing their name. Their current email is name@abc.com and the website is abc.com, all machines are members of the abc.com domain.

The new name is xyz, and they want their email addresses changed to name@xyz.com but still want all mail from abc.com to come to their mailboxes. I'd also like to change the domain name of the servers/workstations to workstationname.xyz.com as well. They have 11 servers, 7 of which are windows server 2000, the rest are server 2003 enterprise, and 2 of the servers are an exchange 2003 cluster.

 

[stash]

You can add a recipient policy to exchange to accept email sent to the new domain, which is pretty easy. It wouldn't require you to change the name of the AD domain, which is much, much more involved and risky.

Do a search for domain rename on microsoft.com. It is only supported in a fully 2003 domain (meaning all DCs must be 2003), and there are many caveats, especially with Exchange involved. The document is about 70 pages long, and every single machine in the domain will need to be rebooted at least once.

 

[RebateMonger]

As Stash noted, changing the email domain is easy.

Not so, the Internal Domain Name. You'd have to REALLY want to change it It will cost a lot of time (money).

I'm a fan of naming Domains very generic names. Like "AAA.LAN". It's easy to spell and type, doesn't present problems with OS9 Macintoshes, and nobody will ever need to change it.

The tackiest thing I've seen lately is a new client, where the person creating their new domain (two years ago) MISSPELLED the owner's name, which was also the Internal Domain Name. And he didn't fix it. He should have IMMEDIATELY re-installed the Server OS and got the name right. It wouldn't have taken more than an hour or two. Now, it'd be a mess to change the Domain name.

 

[stash]

You'd have to REALLY want to change it It will cost a lot of time (money).

In addition to this excellent point, there are no guarantees that the domain renaming process will actually WORK. Even if you follow the doc to the letter. There are way too many variables involved (Exchange, SQL, SMS, a slew of third-party apps).

Domain rename is not something you do with a click and a reboot. You need to test the hell out of this in a lab that mirrors your production environment before you go anywhere near production with rendom.

 

[Markbnj]

How do you change a domain name, as well as change exchange email

You hire a qualified network engineer who comes in and performs the switch for you .

WRT the comment on the expense of changing domains, I assume you mean the related business expenses? They're already changing names, and that's a bigger deal I think.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: MarkbnjWRT the comment on the expense of changing domains, I assume you mean the related business expenses? They're already changing names, and that's a bigger deal I think.

It's just that changing an Internal Domain name is nothing more than a vanity thing. It has NOTHING to do with the Domain names or Server names that outsiders see. You can completely mask the public names of internal Servers using tools like ISA 2004's Server Publishing.

 

[Joemonkey]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: MarkbnjWRT the comment on the expense of changing domains, I assume you mean the related business expenses? They're already changing names, and that's a bigger deal I think.

It's just that changing an Internal Domain name is nothing more than a vanity thing. It has NOTHING to do with the Domain names or Server names that outsiders see. You can completely mask the public names of internal Servers using tools like ISA 2004's Server Publishing.

I realize it really isn't important that the internal domain match the external domain, and after some research and replies I don't think I am going to. I was just hoping someone had done this before and could say "but watch out for..." and "when you do this..."

 

[stash]

I was just hoping someone had done this before and could say "but watch out for..." and "when you do this..."

Well ok. I've done it before A bunch of times, but never outside of a lab environment. What to watch out for? The entire process

I would definitely not recommend it.

 

[Kappo]

I couldnt ever get it to work without a hitch in testing, so I just waited for the DC to go off maintenance, bought a new server and created the new domain. Then I added a trust and slowly migrated everyone over.

It's a lot easier to make changes like that a little at a time and deal with 1 or 2 problems rather than having a flood of "WTF I CANT ______ anymore!".

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: Kappo
I couldnt ever get it to work without a hitch in testing, so I just waited for the DC to go off maintenance, bought a new server and created the new domain. Then I added a trust and slowly migrated everyone over.

That's what I would do. Bring up a new domain, trust, migrate. We've been collapsing a ton of little domains that departments have and bringing them into our Enterprise domain. Just create the trust and migrate the pcs and users.