Unity with multiple Exchange servers

[pmccloud]

We have a unity 3.1(3) server talking to an exchange 2000 server. We are looking at either adding another exchange server with a different domain setup, or puting multiple exchange domains on one server. Can Unity work with either of theses setups? And if so, are there any issues we need to be aware of?<br><br>

[#2]

Not really sure what you mean by "exchange domain"... this is a non defined term.

You can have multiple domains in your forrest and have Exchange servers in those domains and a single Unity server can work with them if this is where you're going. The concern there is to make sure you have rights on the containers in each of those domains where you want to create and/or import mailusers as Unity subscribers. The Unity service account will need modify and/or create rights in those containers... you can use the Permissions Wizard (you can download it off AnswerMonkey and it'll be shipping with 3.1(4)) to help out here. You need to select one "root" container in each domain where the respective rights (you can choose to not allow creates, only imports) are granted... all sub containers under that will inherit the right

Other than that there's nothing else you should need to worry about.

If you're talking about routing groups or something else along those lines then we're in a different place entirely.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Technical Lead/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[pmccloud]

What we are looking at doing is setting up another site (company) using our call managers. They are a seperate company's with their own exchange servers. Right now the plan seems to be to have their exchange and ours be on the same server and tie our existing unity box into it. I am not even sure if you can set up exchange that way, with completely different exchange domains, not child domains, on the same server. And if you can, will unity be able to figure it out. It will be exchange 2000, wether or not the 2 company's share an exchange server cluster or not, the goal is still to use one unity server. My boss came up with this idea, and I was given the task of making it work.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[#4]

so short story is you want to setup a tenant services scenario with a single Exchange cluster and a single Unity supporting two seperate companies. I gotcha. My knowledge of directory segementation capabilities of Ex2K/AD is limited, I'll ping some of the gurus and see what they suggest.

Howerver, you need to understand up front that Unity 3.x does not have any kind of directory segementation capabilities at all. You can setup multiple opening greetings and route calls appropriately etc... however the alpha direcotry will allow outside callers to spell the names of any user in the system regardless of which company they are part of, you can dial the ID of anyone you want directly and subscribers can message to any other subscribers by ID/name regardless. If the expectation is that they can somehow make it appear to everyone that there's two companies and not allowing any kind of cross over, this proposal is DOA from the get-go.

If this is understood and you guys still want to proceed, I'll poke around a little bit on the Ex2K/AD references for how to approach this from that end of the house.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Technical Lead/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[pmccloud]

Yeah, I kinda figured that we couldn't make it seem completely separate from each other, but that is not my problem, something for the brass to decide.
thanks for the info.

[#6]

For the Exchange/AD end of things, here's some info that might help. The "Service provider” and “ASP” deployment guides might shed some light on your application:

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/deployment/exchange.asp

this link on hosting with Exchange 2000 might also be helpful:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/plan/hostedexch/aspintro.asp


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Technical Lead/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[pmccloud]

Thanks for the info.