I'm looking for advice (beyond the 'NO, DON'T DO IT') to design a
second exchange 2003 server into our production domain for staging of
our CRM 3.0 environment. I know this is an administrative nightmare,
but I have to ask the question.
We are dissebling our development domain that houses our development
CRM instance (don't ask). The development CRM hardware will become a
staging instance of CRM on our production domain (staging CRM will be
a fresh installation, but will touch an old copy of production CRM's
database).
Basic production layout:
- Production PDC
- Production BDC
- Production Exchange
- Production SQL
- CRM
- CRM Sup****t server #1
- CRM Sup****t server #2
Basic staging layout that authenticates against production PDC and
BDC:
- Staging Exchange
- Staging SQL
- Staging CRM
- Staging Sup****t server #1
- Staging Sup****t server #2
User constrains:
- AD users have to be viewable in Production CRM and Staging CRM
- Emails sent from Staging CRM cannot be sent to users in the field
- All production AD users must have access to staging CRM
Should we setup a separate AD tree in the forest? What other
environment designs should I consider? Would setting up another
exchange instance help us or hinder us?
FYI, I'm copying this post to the Exchange group...
