Trusts between domains

[NeoV]

Quick scenario.

Our company has our own, in-house, exchange server, on our own internal domain.

We were purchased by another company, which is out of state, and has their own exchange server on their own domain.

How can we enable our exchange server to see data from their exchange server, to make things like scheduling meetings easier?

thanks.

 

[dphantom]

Try the link below to start. A lot depends on the level of integration you need between forests.

MS Exchange Forest

 

[RebateMonger]

Make sure you aren't using SBS 2003 for your Domain. It won't allow Trusts. It's one of a couple of limitations you get in exchange for a $450 price tag.

Depending on how many people need to share calendars, you might also have luck with MS Groove 2007 or with Windows SharePoint Services or MS SharePoint Server 2007.

 

[mcmilljb]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Make sure you aren't using SBS 2003 for your Domain. It won't allow Trusts. It's one of a couple of limitations you get in exchange for a $450 price tag.

Depending on how many people need to share calendars, you might also have luck with MS Groove 2007 or with Windows SharePoint Services or MS SharePoint Server 2007.

I'm curious. If it was SBS 2003, does Microsoft have an upgrade path for a situation like this? Like going from SBS 2003 to Standard Server 2003, other than buying the full license.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: mcmilljb
I'm curious. If it was SBS 2003, does Microsoft have an upgrade path for a situation like this? Like going from SBS 2003 to Standard Server 2003, other than buying the full license.

There's an upgrade that gives you a full Server 2003 with full Exchange and client CALs. But the price is comparable to having purchased the full licenses for those products in the first place.

Most companies can pretty much predict their growth over the next few years and can make a judgement whether the SBS licensing restrictions will be a problem for them. But if the whole company gets purchased, that can, obviously, change things.

Note that another option that doesn't require a Trust is for the purchased company to use the larger company's Exchange Servers. Exchange/Outlook can use a VPN or "RPC over Https" to let users connect directly to the new owner's Exchange Server(s) and authenticate to it with a Domain account on that server. It really doesn't take much bandwidth and works well. The purchasing company would take responsibility for all of the smaller company's email. The smaller company could continue using it's original domain name, while also giving employees access to the full organization.

 

[NeoV]

Rebate - thanks for the input.

Are there any real problems with trusts?

Is it ok to have trusts with multiple outside domains?

 

[Tarrant64]

What are the plans for Active Directory (I'm assuming your using it)?

The only issue I've run into with trusts is managing permissions between global and local groups. Maybe it's our setup but my company recently acquired another out of state one as well and we ran into the same scenario. Two different exchange setups and two different domains. Originally we were going to merge (and still plan on it) however for the time being we're using trusts. We can't from what I can tell add users or groups from another domain to a "global" group in another. It will only allow this on "local" groups, where you can actually browse the location to another domain.

We're using some sort of "connector" setup with our Exchange server to send emails back and forth. We use a translation method as well so that for the time being domains going @abc.local are now redirected to @cba.local (ie. cba has purchased abc). Eventually I think the @abc.local is going to go away.