Active Directory, 3rd Edition

Exchange 5.5 and the Active Directory Connector

A lot of companies that are migrating to Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 had Exchange 5.5 deployed previously. To help with the transition process, Microsoft created the Active Directory Connector (ADC ), which allows you to migrate at your own pace while maintaining both environments.

Warning

The ADC is a migration utility. It was written for migrations where you want to quickly get off of Exchange 5.5 and onto Exchange 2000 or 2003. The recommendation from Microsoft is to take your time, but don't take too much time. The utility is a very simple metadirectory tool and is not intended for long-term synchronization or very complex syncing tasks. If your goal isn't a quick and direct migration but instead possibly a long-term coexistence of the two environments or alternatively if you have an extremely complicated environment, you may want to consider a more robust metadirectory tool such as Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS).

The ADC is comprised of a service that does the work and an MMC console to manage the service. While the console can be installed on any client or server, the ADC service has to be installed on a server for it to work. If you have separate AD and Exchange administrators, it is generally managed by the Exchange administrators.

Tip

To support connection to the ADC, you will need Microsoft Exchange 5.5 Service Pack 1 or above.

When you install the ADC for the first time in a forest, it extends the schema if ...