Hi All,Im about to carryout a migration of Exchange Server 2000 to Exchange Server 2007, but have a few questions I would really like answering before going ahead with it. 1. I understand that its recommended that we dont install Exchange Server on the same server you have AD services setup. Please could anyone explain the reasoning behind this?Does thisinclude even ifyou plan on installing it on a different drive on the same server to what AD is installed on? This is our primary DC. 2. Our secondDC has Windows server 2000 installed, so this will need an upgrade to either Windows server 2003 or 2008. As a small company with less than 10 users, is there a need for two domain controllers? 3. Lastly, we have another server within our domain, which isnt a DC. This server also has Windows Server 2000 on it; do we need to upgrade the OS on this server also? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

1. Well you can do it but make sure you dont run dcpromo after installation of exchange. again its not recommended to have it.2. You dont need that, but again if you have only one DC and if that crashes, you will have down time to restore the only DC that you have. For that time your exchange, domain login etc twill not work3. I think you should. again no hard and fast rule and you can have a member server which is not upto the domain level.Raj

1. I wouldnt do it. Even though its supported, its not a good idea: ( and installing on a different drive doesnt change anything)http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997407.aspxThis Exchange server is also a domain controller, which is not a recommended configurationhttp://theessentialexchange.com/blogs/michael/archive/2007/11/13/exchange-server-2003-and-domain-controllers-a-summary.aspx(still applies to 2007 for the most part)2. I think in any scenario, a minimum of 2 DC/GCs is a good idea. Note if you install Exchange on a DC/GC, it will only use that GC so you lose your failover capabilities to another DC. 2008 is a good choice to upgrade to. Note that Exchange 2007 is not supported on Windows 2008 R2 just yet. It will soon be however. http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/04/453026.aspx3. You should. It's been out of mainstream support for many years now!

Hi, thank you for your feedbackI'm going tospeak with my managerregarding this, but I think they are set on going ahead andsetting up Exchange on the same server as AD.1. After reading the first link (which was really informative thank you for that), what is it that they are referring to when they say 'clustered node' in the following paragraph? I'm guessing a member server is a server in the domain that isn't a DC is that right? "Running Exchange Server2003 or Exchange Server2007 on a clustered node that is also an Active Directory domain controller is not supported and should never be done. This means that if you are running Exchange2000 Server on a node in a cluster that is also a domain controller, you must demote the server to a member server prior to upgrading from Exchange2000 Server to Exchange Server2003."I just want to determine if the setup we plan to have is a supported setup. 2. Do I understand correctly? If we have a DC (DC1) with Exchange installed on the same server and you have another DC (DC2) setup on a second server, then DC2 is no use (its redundant) as it isnt seen by Exchange, being that Exchange is installed on the same server as DC1 is installed? Its great to hear that MS are adding support to Exchange Server 2007 for Windows Server 2008 R2, even though we have the prior version of Server 2008. Thanks again for the feedback; together with the links it was really informative.

Yes, a member server is a non-DC server. By clustered node, they mean an Exchange clustered mailbox server, i.e. one that has a passive and active node and can be failed over.Re 2. Yes, if you install Exchange on a DC, it will only use itself for directory access and configuration lookups etc..