Active Directory, Second Edition

Chapter 16. Integrating Microsoft Exchange

Exchange 2000 has been the driving reason behind many companies’ move to Active Directory. Exchange 2000 requires an Active Directory infrastructure, and the dependencies it places on AD are not small. In fact, the Exchange 2000 schema extensions roughly double the size of the default Active Directory schema. There are also restrictions on the location of your domain controllers relative to the Exchange servers. For these reasons and the critical nature of email, calendar, and collaboration services, all of which Exchange can provide, it is clear that Exchange 2000 can be the most significant application you integrate into Active Directory.

In this chapter, we will briefly touch on some of the important issues regarding the integration of Exchange with Active Directory. We’ll cover how to prepare the forest for Exchange and describe some of the changes this causes. Finally, we will review the Active Directory Connector (ADC), which aids in the transition from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000.

Quick Word about Exchange Server 2003

Exchange Server 2003, the next major release of Exchange, is currently due out in the summer of 2003. While there are many new features planned for that release, the way it integrates with Active Directory largely remains the same. This chapter focuses on Exchange 2000, but the concepts and procedures we describe map very closely to Exchange Server 2003 as well.

Here are a few key points to note about Exchange Server ...