Advanced Accepted Domain Question

Question

When you install Exchange 2010 into an organization that previously had Exchange 2003, new Active Directory objects are created here:
CN=Accepted Domains,CN=Transport Settings,CN=DemoLab,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=demolab,DC=local
Within each one of these objects there is an attribute called msExchAcceptedDomainFlags.  If the value for this attribute is:
·           1 - It’s an External Relay Domain
·           2 - ?
·           8 - It’s an authoritative domain
·           10 - It’s an Internal Relay Domain
·           12 - ?
When I first started working with Exchange 2007, I didn’t realize these were new objects.  In fact, I thought when you clicked the Accepted Domains tab in EMC it was just somehow interpreting the previous recipient policies which are located here:
CN=Recipient Policies,CN=DemoLab,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=demolab,DC=local
Each of the recipient policy objects located here has a multi-valued attribute called msExchNonAuthoritativeDomains and another called gatewayProxy. 
Instead of making each domain as an object and indicating whether or not it’s one of the 3 above types via flag, the policies simply list all the authoritative domains in gatewayProxy and domains that would otherwise be considered Internal Relay within msExchNonAuthoritativeDomains.
So now that I’ve laid this out, I have a question (a few questions).
A.      At what point during the Exchange install are these objects created?
B.       The objects are obviously created by somehow copying elements of the recipient policies.  Are these two objects kept in sync beyond initial creation?
In my example my AD domain is demolab.local.  This is also the primary domain used in my recipient policy in 2003.  This domain was marked as non-authoritative within the ESM.  When Exchange 2010 was introduced, an Accepted Domain object was created, but it was marked as authoritative – not Relay as it should have been.
C.       Why?
I have other domains marked as non-authoritative in the recipient policies as well.  However, these did get created properly as relay domains.  Why wasn’t demolab.local preserved? 
D.      Is it because it also matches the name of my AD forest?
This is easily fixed, (don’t tell me how to change accepted domain types).  I’m just looking to better understand this topic.
Mike Crowley: MCT, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP: Enterprise Administrator / Messaging Administrator

Answer 1

For B, it won't let you create a new e-mail address policy for a domain that is not one of the accepted domains, and adding an accepted domain doesn't do anything to e-mail address policies.  So I guess the answer is no, not exactly.  If you have Exchange 2003 in the mix, I guess B could be answered through the best practice of not using Exchange 2003 management tools to manage organizational settings like recipient/e-mail address policies after installing Exchange 2007/2010.
C  & D? Since the domain fqdn in my greenfield lab was marked as authoritative, maybe this is default behavior and it doesn't check first?  Ahh, 2003, how I'm forgetting some of the little things, I think by default the domain fqdn is marked as authoritative in the default recipient policy, if so, I'll bet that 90% or more of Exchange 2003 organizations that have the domain fqdn in the recipient policy have it set as authoritative. 
Joseph Durnal