Active Directory Forest Consolidation

Question

Dear Folks,

A customer has multiple AD Forest for different business units, due to recent business restructuring they want to consolidate all IT services under single IT. For that, customer wants to have single new 2016 based AD forest with Exchange 2016 (all On-Premises environment).

Currently customer has 2008 R2 based AD Infrastructure as following.

IslandA.com with two child domains like City1.IslandA.com and City2.IslandB.com. Root Domain (IslandA.com holds Exchange 2010 and System center infrastructure too).

IslandB.com with three child domains like City1.IslandB.com, City2.IslandB.com and City3.IslandB.com. Root Domain (IslandB.com holds Exchange 2010, System center infrastructure and some other applications like Oracel, Dynamics etc).

Now, Customer wants to have new forest like Alpha.com based on Windows 2016 and all AD, Exchange infrastructure to be migrated under it.

Customer has around 10,000 user based infrastructure spanning in 5 countries. I would like to request you please help me to design best approach for this project. Some tips, third party tools and some design guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello @M. Sheeraz Ansari ,

Thank you for posting here.

Q: I would like to request you please help me to design best approach for this project. Some tips, third party tools and some design guidance

A: Here is the reply for your reference.

1.For domain/forest migration/restructure, we can use ADMT tool.

2.Install new target 2016 AD forest, and we can install ADMT tool and SQL (in my lab, it is SQL 2017) onto a member server in the new target forest.

3.We can install one or more child domain in the new target forest depending on your requirements, or maybe we only need a forest root domain without any child domain in the new target forest.

4.For any other application (such as Exchange 2010, System center infrastructure and some other applications like Oracel, Dynamics etc), we should post our question in their corresponding Q&A forum so that a dedicated support professional can further assist you with this request.

For example,

1.if we can migrate Exchange 2010 from one forest to another new forest;
2.How to migrate Exchange 2010 from one forest to another new forest;
3.What is the prerequisites for migrate Exchange 2010 from one forest to another new forest (such as OS version of domain controllers and forest functional level).

Exchange Server supportability matrix
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/Exchange/plan-and-deploy/supportability-matrix?view=exchserver-2019

For more information about migrating/ restructuring AD, we can refer to the links below.

Active Directory Migration Tool version 3.2
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56570

Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT) Guide: Migrating and Restructuring Active Directory Domains
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19188

ADMT Series – 2. Preparing the ADMT Machine (including ADMT Series – 1 to ADMT Series – 11)
https://blog.thesysadmins.co.uk/admt-series-preparing-the-admt-machine.html

ADMT Series – 1. Preparing Active Directory
ADMT Series – 2. Preparing the ADMT Machine
ADMT Series – 3. SID History
ADMT Series – 4. Password Export Server
ADMT Series – 5. Machine Preparation
ADMT Series – 6. Service Account Migration Wizard
ADMT Series – 7. Group Account Migration Wizard
ADMT Series – 8. User Account Migration Wizard
ADMT Series – 9. Merging Users with a Different sAMAccountName
ADMT Series – 10. Security Translation Wizard – Local Profiles
ADMT Series – 11. Computer Migration Wizard

Hope the information is helpful. If anything is unclear, please feel free to let us know.

Tip: we can set up ADMT in lab before we do it in production environment.

Best Regards,
Daisy Zhou

Answer 2

Thanks Daisy for answering Active Directory part. I will check on other forums for Exchange and Applications part. Thanks.