Exchange 2007 and domain (re)name consideration

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I’m trying to get back on track with all this blogging thing … probably trip to Seattle next week will not be helpful with that (BTW – if You are attending TR 🙂 you can meet this blog’s author there next week) but will see. For today … quick tip about Exchange 2007 and domain rename.

Choosing AD forest \ domain name should be part of service design process but as reality shows it is often a random choice (often political) and domain name has to be changed later. This also happens for other reasons – merges and acquisitions happens.  Domain rename tool was answer in case of such need .. but not anymore with Exchange 2007 in scope.

formerly[1] (cc) antgirl

In case we have Exchange 2007 already in organization or we are planning to introduce it in the feature it is good to know that domain rename for organization with Ex2007 is not a supported option anymore. So before going with Exchange 2007 setup in our organization it is wise to consider if we want to do domain rename operation because later only domain migration will be probably supported option.

There is (or will be) also one additional issue which is related to Exchange and domain name – to be specific single label domain name (SLD). To be honest I never was a great fan of those and SLD is causing more troubles with no advantages. Really it is not a choice if domain name has to be chosen.

One additional reason not to use SLD is fact that Exchange 2007 is last version which will support SLD and Exchange 14 will not support it at all. So if you are still in environment with SLD consider rename or migration as an option before you will introduce Exchange 2007.

Update

Policies are always subject to change 🙂 … and so it is in this case. It looks like SLD support in Exchange 14 might be still present and Exchange team is right now investigating this option.