Renaming a windows 2003 domain?

we currently have an office server running on Windows 2003. The server hosts e-mail (exchange) and active directory. Also we have two client pc's which get their internet connection and their profiles through the server.

The server is currently running at a specific domain. xxx.companyname.nl. Our companyname has changed and we would like to change the domain to xxx.newcompanyname.nl. Is this a complex procedure (are we better off re-installing?), or can this be done easily?

Exchange being on a DC makes a normal "Domain rename" a bit complicated. If you've only got a few mailboxes I'd consider doing a full PST export of the mailboxes with EXMERGE (and any Public Folders, using Outlook), uninstalling and retiring the Exchange organization, then performing a normal domain rename (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc786120(WS.10).aspx), and re-installing Exchange and importing the email.

Be aware that after such a "PST migration" you'll need to edit the X500 address proxies on recipients so that replies to old intra-organization emails work properly (see http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2009/05/21/cannot-reply-to-old-emails-or-modify-old-calendar-items-after-pst-mail-migration.aspx for details about what I'm talking about).

This shouldn't be too hard of a road, really. Since you can gather all the pertinent details re: Exchange prior to the export / uninstall / reinstall / import, it should go fine.

Seriously don't do it! Renaming your domain will take you far longer than migrating/creating to a new domain name.

Or easier still just ignore your domain name, end users never need interact with it. Aside form the "member of domain" section in Windows it is irrelevant what your Domain is called - simply creating a new DNS zone and adding the new domain name to Exchange will do the trick.

Renaming domains has been possible since Windows Server 2003 was introduced (as opposed to Windows 2000, which explicitly stated domain names were not changeable). The procedure is a bit complex and involves using command-line tools (rendom.exe) and editing XML configuration files, but it can be done and works quite well.

Now, renaming a domain with Exchange is a bit more tricky. You can find a good guide to this here:

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Domain-Rename.html

just adding a related caution on ghost and DCs but can't comment in line with the ghosting discussion due to rep:

Having recovered a DC from a Ghost image, it's possible but there can be wrinkles if replication has continued with "current" version of the DC that you wish to restore.

As replication continues, the USN continues to be incremented and restoring the ghost image results in the DC reporting lower USN and it will be out of sync with the up-to-date DCs.

There are ways around this but adding Exchange into the mix likely adds even more wrinkles.

For ref. there's a discussion of this issue and possible ways to correct it: http://utools.com/help/UsnRollback.asp

I have done this several times at customers, and although the walkthrough documentation is a bit on the heavy side, the procedure itself actually isn't that complicated. For a one-server job with two pc's I'd say this is done in 3-4 hours if you know what you're doing.

IF you are running Exchange 2007 the procedure is unsupported though, so don't go there.