I guess it should be pretty straightforward but got some dire warning from our supplier about it so here it goes.. The current situation is this: 2 coexisting domains, a windows 2000 domain(A) and an SBS 2003 domain. In this situation A supplies dhcp whereas B is used purely as a mailserver.(the 2 domains are entirely seperate) The thing is now that a part of the company will relocate outside the building this yr so having their own server(domain C) is a pro. To prevent having to move both physically and the network wise at that stage, the network part is going to go first(i.e. while still within the current building) In what ways could this cause problems? Until the physical move there shall be 2 SBS servers within our network but each with their own Active Direcory and Domain Controller. (the SBS 2003 swing process springs to mind) It is not my intention integrate C into one of the current domains (A/B) or to set up domain trusts or anything, DHCP will therefore remain with A . I did do some research into this like this explanation: http://iqubed.blogspot.co...un-mult... It seems to me that putting another SBS 2003 server in our network itself should not cause a problem? (B and C will in effect just be neighbours with each their own AD and subnet)

link should be http://iqubed.blogspot.com/2006/07/...

The first issue here momo77 is that you are thinking in NT terms of domains. In Active Directory we think in terms of Forests that contain domains. You should not have three forests. That is three times the maintenance and potencial problems. At the least you should have one forest with three domains. At the very best you would have one forest with one domain. Not sure what distance "out of the building" means but creating a domain just because you need to place a server in their location isn't normally a basis for creating a new forest and domain. Since you mention keeping the same dhcp you won't be routing so again its not normal to create a forest/domain for this location. At this stage you might want to consider forest consolidation. Dcpromo down the 2000 AD and then join the 2003 SBS forest and its domain as a dc. The outside server would be added in kind but could not be a SBS. There can only be one SBS in a SBS forest. PS. one part of the blog discussion is really about the confusion between a limitation of SBS, only one in a forest, with one one in a tcp/ip subnet. As you know SBS can coexist on the same subnet. Are you ready for where Microsoft wants you to go today?

Let me say this: You CAN have two SBS systems on the same network, but you cannot have two SBS systems on the same domain. The trick is that at least one network cannot use DHCP for the clients. This is because of DNS issues. Each client must know only about it's own server as the DNS server, so by specifying one network as static with it's own DNS information and NOT using DHCP on it, the other server can hand out appropriate IP addresses via DHCP to other DHCP clients. Now, that said, I completely agree with Wanderer - you do NOT want to use separate domains and especially so with SBS when you have a company with multiple sites - just setup DCs for each site (NON-SBS except for ONE site) and connect them with VPNs. The administration will be a lot easier and the access between the users at each site will be a lot smoother.

Thanks for both of your replies to help clear things up a bit. Part of the company (technically not really part of it at all but using our network) will be relocating in a few months. Since they have no network infrastructure as such and will need it in some form or another the future a new server of their own would be the best way to forward.(they make use of our servers for some apps) Hence the setting up of a completely new domain as they will(never actually have been anyway) not be part of our company in the future. Until they relocate it would ideal be ideal to migrate their apps to the new SBS server and have it sit in our network with just them using that server. This would ensure a smooth transition later on when they move out.

lwcomputing "you cannot have two SBS systems on the same domain." can't in same FOREST. It's FOREST in AD not Domains Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search