Exchange 2007 Beta 2 drops today, and I know some of you are very excited. However, please save yourself a lot of time/money and don’t introduce Beta 2 into your production environment. This means no in-place upgrades and no new server installs that join your existing organization.
The only way to test Beta 2 in a ‘live’ environment is to deploy a separate AD Forest and create the necessary trusts and connectors. See the Exchange Server 2003 Release Notes for more information on deploying Exchange 2007 Beta 2 in a separate forest (specifically the section Cross-Forest Connectors: Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2003).
I’ll post more on this topic as soon as I get the code implemented in my test lab. Stay tuned…