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Julian123

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Migrating to a new Active Directory forest with Exchange

We have an AD forest called olddomain.local Windows 2003 active directory with Exchange 2007. We plan to build a new forest called newdomain.local and running Windows 2008 r2 active directory and Exchange 2010.  We then want to migrate all mailboxes, user accounts, goups, etc. from one to the other. The reason we are building a new forest as we want to change the internal domain name.

How should I go about doing this?
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Wasim Shaikh
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Hi,
I will suggest you to have a look at http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/upgrade-from-exchange-2007-to-exchange-2010---part-1/ and www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/upgrade-from-exchange-2007-to-exchange-2010---part-ii/

There are many articles which will give you a good idea on how and what has to be done.

A paid version of guide is available at http://exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-server-2010-migration
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Julian123

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Thanks, but these articles do not cover cross forest scenarios. I'm looking for one that does as I need to do that migration as well
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Wasim Shaikh
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This will give you idea on how to get it done, not exactly what you have to do, coz almost all network infrastructure and scenarios are different.
Create the new domain, install exchange, create all the connectors, etc. create trust between the two forests/two domains, ensure the each domain's account is in the enterprise admins group of the other, migrate mailboxes, public folders, etc, updated the policies, test mailflow
If you only have a small number of users, it would be much easier to just export/import PST files for each mailbox, and use the built-in tools in Windows 2008 R2 to import CSV files with users/groups.

So it will be like this:
1. Setup the new AD and make sure everything works perfect.2
2. Install Exchange in the new AD.
3. Import users/groups (export them as CSV files and import them)
4. Copy some basic settings in the users profiles like favorites, as you need to have completely new profiles on Win2008 R2 (since you are also change Windows version).
5. Create new mailbox users in Exchange based on the CSV file earlier.
6. Import PST files from old users mailbox.