Two exchange servers on same network

exchange-2003 exchange-2010

5,242

Solution 1

The number of servers really isn't relevant. The problem is the number of Exchange organisations. You can have many exchange servers per organisation, and IIRC one organisation per AD forest (e.g. AD domain or related group of domains). You can have many entirely separate AD forests on a 'physical' LAN and each one of those can support their own exchange organisation, of course. It's written for exchange 2007 but you may find this Microsoft technet documentation helpful to understand these concepts and terminology.

Each organisation can support multiple domains (both in terms of email and AD domains), and you can choose to have multiple servers in your organisation with separate servers housing mailboxes for each mail domain (or AD domain or whatever).

So yes, what you're doing is possible. Your next steps to implement this depend somewhat on what exactly you mean when you say you want to add a new exchange server "to the network". If you want a test environment for development or to rehearse a migration then I strongly suggest implementing a totally separate AD forest/domain on a virtual server to install Exchange 2010 into.

Solution 2

You will not see any issues. I have this set up right now for a dev environment. Just make sure to set your mx records correctly and only the mail destined for your test domain will get there as well as only mail sent to your prod domain will get there. Then point your outlook to where you want to work on, dev vs prod.

Solution 3

The Simple answer - Yes you can.

5,242

Hoorayo

VB/C#/Asp.Net/Asp.Net MVC Developer.

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Hoorayo over 1 year
This is the setup for

Now - There is only one exchange server on this network
```
Server : 2003 Exchange server 
IP     : 111.111.111.010(public ip)
Domain : aaa.com
```
Future - I want to add a new exchange 2010 server on the same network for test puopse.
```
Server : 2010 Exchange server 
IP     : 111.111.111.020(public ip)
Domain : ccc.com
```
---Question---

Can I have two exchange server on the same network with two different domain name?

Should I consider any conflict between these exchange servers?
- Zoredache over 13 years
  
  Are you talking about two separate AD domains, or just to separate DNS names?
- Hoorayo over 13 years
  
  It will be two separate AD domains.
Hoorayo over 13 years

Yes. it will be a test environment.Thanks for your answer.
Rob Moir over 13 years

Happy to help. Remember for a totally separate test environment you can restore a backup of one of your current domain controllers and so-on if you need realistic data to play with.