Setting up multiple domains in Exchange as different Organizational Units?

Question

I some questions regarding the above a few months ago, and was pointed to the tutorials below. I have followed the tutorials, but have a few more questions for you experts. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb936719%28EXCHG.80%29.aspx#Optn1 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996314.aspx

To describe what I am doing in more details: I currently have my company (domain1.com) running on it's own Exchange 2010 server (Windows Server 2008). I also have my whole clan, about 25 family members, (domain2.com) running on a separate Exchange 2007 server (SBS 2008). I have recently acquired a new domain (domain3.com) which I want to move my company onto, so I will need to receive emails on the original domain and the new one.

So far... I have installed a typical instance of Exchange 2010 onto a new Server 2008 instance and have set it up as a domain in a new forest titled "domain3.com". I have created two organizational units under this active directory called "domain3.com" and "domain2.com". I have created three accepted domains in EMC titled "domain1.com", "domain2.com" and "domain3.com". I have created two email address policies titled "domain2.com and "domain3.com".

I DID NOT follow the steps in the above tutorials around changing permissions to the GAL, New Address List and Offline Address List as it doesn't matter if the different organizational units cross over on these. We do not make use of the GAL, and it doesn't matter if the different parties access the different Address Lists. Is this OK or should I have followed these steps too?

Am I on the correct track so far?

How do I configure the new users so that I can assign them to one of the two accepted domains? At the moment, they can only be assigned to domain3.com as it is set to default.

Answer 1

I'm not quite sure why you created a new forest (domain3.com) - that seems overly complex unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to achieve.

On your domain1.com Exchange server, you are able to add domain3.com as an accepted domain and if necessary edit the email policy to include email addresses from domain3 as well. You're then able to have a user who can accept mail using [email protected] and [email protected] going into the same mailbox. You can also choose which is the primary SMTP address which appears in the Reply-To header.

I should also point out that it's a good job you didn't follow the instructions you linked to. Address List Segregation is currently not supported by Microsoft on Exchange 2010 (source: Dave Goldman's WebLog - he plays a big part in writing the Address List Segregation whitepaper).

At our company we have 1 Active Directory forest and domain and our Exchange environment accepts emails for about 45 different domains, so it's entirely achievable with a single Exchange server, and like I said - unless I misunderstand what you're after, you're making it much more complex and expensive (in terms of licensing) than it needs to be.

Answer 2

If I'm reading it right, your new AD domain looks like this:

And I'm unclear if you're trying to get both domain2 and domain3 addresses on your users, or just one or the other. This can be done. On your Hub Transport Role in Organizational Config, under E-mail Address Policies you can list several policies in order of application. In these rules you can specify conditions for who gets which addresses. You can even set the domain used on the From: line through these. Unfortunately, OU placement is NOT one of them. The Department, Company, or any of the Custom Attributes can be used for this.

To use those, you do need to run a command to force application. They'll get some addresses on-creation, but the rules created here will add more and set reply-addresses.