Joining Two Active Directory Domainds into 1 Forest

[sdsnider]

Our company merged with a UK company and we both have Active Directory domains (native)

The UK company is the main office and already has a forest set up with other sites.

Is there any way that I can join their forest with my native mode AD?

It's my understanding that since I'm in native mode I cannot join an existing forest, please tell me this isn't so, I don't want to have to recreate my domain from scratch. Any links or tips you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

 

[globalstrata]

Yes.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr.../windows2000serv/deploy/cookbook/cookintr.asp

Gladys Rodriguez
GlobalStrata Solutions

http://www.globalstrata.com

 

[xmsre]

ADMT v2 can be very usefull in this type of restructure scenario.

 

[sdsnider]

Thank you for the help! This should be quite a fun ride.

 

[Seaspray0]

You can join the two forests together with trust relationships. They will still be seperate forests but they will have the ability to share as if they were in the same forest. If you want to be in the same forest, you will need to migrate the domains from one forest into the other (alot more work involved there).

 

[Davetoo]

What about upgrading to W2K+3 first? Doesn't it offer a better route to changing domain structures?

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[sdsnider]

Well I'm currently unable to get the approval for purchasing 2003 licenses for our servers currently and the parent company just finished completely going to 2000 so I highly doubt they'll want to start all over moving to 2003 so soon.

As for trust relationships, they just aren't enough. The parent company and myself both want a more centralized control of network policies. Plus we are looking forward to integrating our Exchange servers into AD once the domain forest is in place properly. (Currently we're on 5.5 waiting to bring Exchange to 2000 as soon as this step is done)