Hi, We have a diverse and complicated IT organisation the result of mergers and acquisitions with multiple forests and multiple Exchange 2003 (currently) organisations that historically been managed as separate instances, by separate IT teams. After a restructuring process the management of these systems now falls to a consolidated centralised team. As a result of this, we would like to centralise and simplify the management of the multiple AD and E2K3 environments centrally for our L1 & L2 help desk support staff by way of a centralised Windows TS server (or 2 for redundancy). On the TS (which would be a member of one domain in one forest) we would have the E2K3 Management tools, and ideally from here would like the ability to manage each Exchange and AD environment. While a future consolidation project is planned (can't come soon enough!), this is still likely sometime off. Is this scenario possible? Can anyone suggest alternatives? Would be most appreciative of any feedback.

Sorry, this is a limitation with the Exchange 2003 management console. Your computer needs to be part of the forest you are managing. You could try to build a Win2k8 R1 Terminal server for each org and then present them all at once to a user via RemoteApp. This is about as close as you're going to get. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=3403d74e-8942-421b-8738-b3664559e46f&displaylang=en The above link is for ESM on Windows Vista. Vista is the same OS essentially as 2008 R1, however the above link is not 'supported' on Server 2008. You'd have to give it a try in a lab. Exchange 2010 supports remote powershell which allows your scenario to work much better. Mike Crowley Check out My Blog!

Besides the suggestion from Mike, please also try the method below: How to manage exchange servers in Domain A from Domain B? Prerequisites: Domain A trusts Domain B, they are different forests 1. Please launch ESM from a workstation or server in Domain A 2. Right-click the organization name, and then click “Delegate Control”, click Next 3. Click “Add” ->”Browse”, and then locate and click the user from Domain B that uses ESM 4. Click the appropriate role, and then click OK 5. From a workstation or server in Domain B, click “Start”->”Run”->type “mmc” 6. In Microsoft Management Console (MMC), click “Console”, and then add “Exchange System” in “Add/Remove” Snap-In 7. Click “Change”, and then type the full domain name of Domain A Notes: When you click “Browse”, trusted domains won’t display 8. Please see if you can now use ESM from Domain B Additional resources: Remotely Administering Exchange 2003Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Neat. I wasn't aware this was possible! Mike Crowley Check out My Blog!

Mike/James - Thanks to you both for replying! From some comprehensive testing we've performed, and from reviewing various documentation and forum posts etc it seemed that the likely only option was to have a TS for each Forest/Domain..... and managed independently. We were hopeful that there may have been a workaround, but alas........ :-) The ability to manage ESM via a customisable MMC snap-in is good for managing E2K3 server specific tasks, but unfortunately the primary issues we had are with the management of the mail-enabled objects (users) using the Exchange-aware ADUC MMC. Mosts tasks seemed to work ok, but performing certain tasks such as mail-enabling an existing user for instance only allows you to select an exchange server, SG, and MB store of the local Exchange Org, and not the remote forest/domain..... (despite contect being for that domain). Again, thanks to you both for taking the time to respond. Cheers, Mark.

Very detailed information James!