Exchange Infrastructure Revamp

[kyuss]

Any zgeekers exchange guru's?
Scenario
Site 1: Win 2k Adv Serv running Exchange 2k hosting domain xxx.com
Site 2: Win 2k Adv Serv running Exchange 2k hosting domain yyy.com
Site 3: Win NT running Exchange 5.5 hosting domain zzz.com

All sites have seperate AD forests. Except NT of course ;)

Goal:
I want to have all three sites running AAA.COM for email hence removing xxx.com, yyy.com and zzz.com domain names being used for email from the infrastructure in place at the moment.

Hosting the domain in one site and using POP3 from the remote sites is an ugly solution.

I was thinking off having an SMTP server hosting aaa.com in site 1 and then having mailbox servers located in site 2 and site 3 which comunicate with the central SMTP server through VPN.

Upgrade of NT to 2K is allowed. BUT if there is a solution that doesn't need this, don't hesitate to tell.

My exchange knowledge is next to nothing...

Any suggestions?
Need more info?

Thanks.

[Lujan]

If you are not using exchange for its gruopware abilities, don't use it.

Exchange is expensive and ungainly for just pop3/smtp.

Personally I would go a unix solution for that.

Ideally I would want one server that is the main mailserver, and the others removed / reused / given to me :D

Unless aaa.com has over 200,000 mail users. I would not see the point of more than one mid range server.

[plext]

So long as none of these sites are using SBS you could put in site connectors if you have VPN between the sites.

For example: You make site A the primary SMTP receptor and have site connectors to B & C. This will create contacts within the AD of site A which you can assign email addresses using recipient update services, much in the same way that normal user accounts are.

You would obviously need to support the old domain addresses within site A to stop legacy addressed email bouncing.

It would also be my preference to create a site connector between B & C, while making site B the secondary SMTP receptor in the DNS. This will allow receipt of external mail and mail flow between sites if site A goes down.

This probably sounds daunting at first read but it is not really that difficult to acheive.

From and administrative standpoint, the best solution would be to bring the NT4 domain to 2k and merge all domains into one, allowing you to have a single exchange org. A truck load more work to be sure, but it would pay off in a hundred different ways. That would be my choice, but then I'm not known for doing things the easy way when I can craft a more elegant solution. Perhaps I should be. :)

[kyuss]

Yeah, upgrading the NT domain to 2K and having all the AD domains in the same forest and one exchange org would be the tidiest and most streamlined solution, but it's a HUGE project just for the end desired result which is have all sites under the same email banner (as too speak...).


Thanks for the advice!