Exchange 2000 with NT 4 PDC

While what you are trying to do is "do-able", you are creating some extra problems for yourself. Some other issues to take into consideration.

Exchange 2000 not only requires Windows 2000 Server, it also requires Active Directory. Implementing Active Directory (AD) automatically implies creating an Active Directory domain, which also implies creating a Win2K Domain Controller (DC). Win2K DCs CANNOT exist in a NT4 domain.

Therefore you have the added issue of having to deal with 2 seperate domains (the AD domain hosting your Exchange 2000 server and your NT4 domain).

If you are going to all the trouble to set up Exchange 2000, I would suggest migrating your entire domain to a Win2K AD domain. Then your migration path is fairly simple. Install Exchange 2000 on a member server in the AD domain in the same Exchange site as your 5.5 server. Then use the "move mailbox" tool included with Exchange to move the mailboxes from the 5.5 server to the 2000 server.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for answering.

I will keep this question opened for another couple of days to see if anybody else has any other solution. Migrating an entire domain to an AD domain is out of the question.

If no one else could provide a good answer within 3 days, I will accept your answer.

Thanks,

- Khai

Create a new Win2k AD domain and set up a two-way trust between the domains. Install Exchange 2000 on the new server and it should work fine. I've done it myself.

That would mean two different domains. Hrmm...my company does not plan to move to Windows 2000 domains anytime soon so...How well would the Windows 2000 domain integrate into the existing NT4 domain? Any conflicts? Problems.

Thanks

Since you need AD for Exchange 2K, the only way to have a mixed mode domain with AD is for the Win2K machine to be the "PDC". In this environment the NT4 BDCs will continue to act as BDCs with no problem. It just doesn't work the other way around - you can't have a Win2K machine with AD in a domain with an NT4 PDC. What you need to do is to migrate your WinNT PDC to Win2K and make it your Exchange server. This should work OK if you don't have too many users in your domain (you don't say howmany) and can move any other services that use lots of resources to other servers. Hope this helps!

This question was closed by the author