You misunderstand what an AG is. What isn't clear is whether the second Exchange is actually installed on the DC for the "stand-alone AD". This is quite significant because it is not supported to run dcpromo on a server where Exchange is already installed. Regardless, it really doesn't matter. Deinstall Exchange and start over. The potential issues aren't worth the minimal time savings. And they are minimal. ________________________________ From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jabber Wock Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 5:24 PM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [ExchangeList] Changing name of "First Administrative Group" Hi all, I have an Exchange 2003 server up and running. Now we want to add a second Exchange server. This second server will be for a separate isolated sub-organization in the same Active Directory. In other words, it may as well be a stand-alone Exchange server, but for administrative purposes we would prefer that it be in the same AD. So far so good. The second Exchange server has been installed, but it ended up being installed into a separate stand-alone AD, with forestprep and dcpromo being run on the stand-alone AD. And also, the name of the Exchange group is the same default name as in the other Exchange server, i.e. "First Administrative Group". Rather than re-install everything from scratch (this is a new server so no email data has accumulated yet), I am planning to do the following: PROPOSED STEPS: Join the new server into the current AD, and delete the old AD tree once this is done. Make the ADC on the new server, a backup to the primary ADC. Create a sub-organizational unit under the current AD for this server and partition it off for permissions as usual. My questions are: a) Do you see any issues with the steps I am proposing above? Do I need to run forestprep on the new Exchange server or dcpromo or anything like that again? b) Would there be an issue with having two Exchange servers in the same AD both named "First Administrative Group"? If so, should I rename it first, before joining it into the AD? What are the ramifications of not renaming it? TIA! JW