Exchange 2010 Merge

[cybertimber2008]

I have been tasked with merging Exchange infrastructure with Company A and recently bought Company B. From my research I think I understand what needs to be done, but I wanted to double check.

 

For starters, Company A and Company B will continue to use their respective domains for logging in. So we create a Active Directory Trust between DomainA and DomainB, and then a Exchange Forest Trust between DomainAXCHG and DomainBXCHG. (simplified there of course)

 

After that, is it possible to migrate a mailbox from DomainBXCHG to DomainAXCHG, and let them continue to log into their mailbox using their DomainB credentials? I know we did mailbox migrations from our old Exchange 2007 server to our new Exchange 2010 server, but that was on the same domain. Across domains is unclear and I don't have a lab environment set up to test it.

 

Some of what I have read (at least for alternatives) seems to lead that you have to create an account & Mailbox in DomainA, and then give their account in DomainB access to that mailbox. But that would mean exporting their email into a .pst and importing it into the new mailbox though.

[cybertimber2008]

Ah, I'm needing to use linked mailboxes aren't I?

Since DomainA and DomainB will be a forest trust.

[sc302 Veteran]

If I remember right you will have to export the mailboxes then import them into exchange. This will loose all of the common pointers in the exchange server and create duplicate mail items in the exchange server. There are far worse things. You can do a few to test with this will create a live test environment.

[cybertimber2008]

So I couldn't do a remote move request to move the mailbox from DomainBXCHG to DomainAXCHG somehow?

[sc302 Veteran]

That should work. The last time I had to do anything like this was with a 03 and 07 server. Exmerge was the greatest thing and exchange sucked with its new fangled powershell. My memory is old.