Trust me

We are testing Exchange 2007 in our 64-bit Windows Server 2003 Exchange Resource Forest Topology using two virtual servers (with VMWare -- Microsoft Virtual Server does not work in a 64-bit environment). We created two VMs -- the "user forest" and the "Exchange forest". We set up a one-way trust between the two forests, and tried to create a "Linked" user mailbox.

After a head-banging week, we can NOT get this to work. No matter what we do, when we try to link to the mailbox we get a Event ID 2130 (MsExchangeADAccess....Exchange Active Directory Provider could not find an available domain controller). We can ping the domain, the nsLookup is fine, dcdiag /v, netdiag /v -- everything comes back without errors.

Is anybody else having this problem? How did you solve it?

One of Sumatra's clients suggested this might work if we created five VMs - one for the DNS/DHCP, a second for the user DC, a third for the resource DC, a fourth for Exchange, and a fifth for the client. We will test his theory later this week (or this weekend).

Here is an image of the topology linked from the Microsoft Exchange Resource Forest Topology article:


-R