[sdw2003] NT to W2K3 AD migration questions

[Eric Louie]

It doesn't really sound like you need to do an in-place upgrade.  Put up
a fresh Win2003 server, DCPROMO, seize FSMO roles, and start
transferring data and roles off the old NT server if need be.  If you
need a 2nd DC, put up another Win2003, DCPROMO.  Once you're confident
that your AD information is correctly transferred, demote the NT BDCs
and then the PDC.  If you are ready to upgrade the Win2k server(s), then
do that too, and you can rid yourself of "mixed mode" in the domain
unless the FreeBSD doesn't work in Win2003 native mode (sorry, I just
don't know enough Samba to know, and will let you research that)

-----Original Message-----
From: sdw2003-bounces at mattware.com [mailto:sdw2003-bounces at mattware.com]
On Behalf Of Doug Sampson
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 5:41 PM
To: 'sdw2003 at mattware.com'
Subject: [sdw2003] NT to W2K3 AD migration questions

I am planning a migration from a NT domain to a W2K3 AD domain. Long
overdue.

I am debating going with an in-place upgrade versus creating a two-way
trust
between the NT domain and a new AD domain. We have three NT 4.0 SP6
servers
(two of them are PDC/BDCs) and four W2K/W2K3 member servers along with
seven
FreeBSD servers using Samba. We also want to upgrade Exchange 5.5 to
Exch
2003. I've identified all or most relevant materials to study and
prepare
for the migration. A few questions remain.

One, when I last looked into this a while ago during the W2K Server
days,
one of the issues with an in-place upgrade using an existing NT domain
controller was that you couldn't specify an AD domain name. They would
take
whatever was your NetBIOS domain name and attach a ".com" to it. Is this
still true for the in-place upgrade to W2K3 AD? I'm inclined to do an
in-place upgrade only if I can specify an AD domain name of my choice.

Two, assuming that the in-site upgrade goes well, can I completely
transfer
all domain controller functions from these aging domain controllers to
new
machines? I vaguely seem to recall something about difficulties
migrating
certain domain controller functions (global catalog comes to mind) to
other
domain controllers. 

Three, I looked at the system requirements for upgrading Windows servers
to
W2K3 servers. The aging NT domain controllers appear to meet all
requirements except for one- available 1.5 GB of free space on the OS
disk.
Does anyone know if the upgrade routine is extremely picky about this?

Four, how easy is it to migrate printer drivers and printer shares from
a NT
server to a W2K3 server? I looked at printmig.exe version 3.0 and that
seem
to indicate it was quite easy to do so. Comments, anyone?

I may have more questions later on but the ones listed here are the more
relevant ones. Any other gotchas I may need to know?

~Doug




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