Does anyone have experience using resource forest for Exchange 2010 or earlier instead of deploying in accounts forest? Do they work as well as using Exchange within the account forest? Are there any gotchas?

Most of the "gotchyas" are with administration. This is one of those topologies I'd suggest as a last resort. The upkeep of 2 forests is usually only justified when there are business requirements seperating areas of responsibility. However in Exchange 2010 SP1 there is a new feature that might even help with that. Active Directory split permissions Active Directory split permissions enable you to completely separate the administrative capabilities of Exchange administrators from your Active Directory administrators. The ability to create and remove Active Directory users and groups and manage non-Exchange attributes of Active Directory objects by Exchange administrators and servers has been removed in Exchange 2010 SP1. For more information about Active Directory split permissions, see Understanding Split Permissions. But be sure to check out these three articles before you start: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchange2010/thread/188fa15b-7d5b-4444-82d3-08f46e4b2c0b http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998031.aspx http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/planning-architecture/deploying-exchange-resource-forest-part1.html Mike Crowley Check out My Blog!