Upgrading NT

There are several ways to upgrade your NT 4.0 domain, ranging from an in-place upgrade of your PDC (always upgrade PDC first!) to implementing a brand-new Active Directory domain and copying your users to this new domain.
IT really depends on your existing structure. If you have just one domain with a limited amount of resources, I would consider doing an in-place upgrade. My best advise would be to start reading up and consider getting some help from some consultant who has done this several times. This should not be such a problem since lots of companies have already upgraded to Active Directory.
If you want to start by reading about the upgrade process, I recommend to go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/pds-cduadtoc.asp for more information.

Given the potential enormity of the task, and the nature of this (TR) forum, that wasn't too bad of an answer.

But I'll take a stab at it.

The most important step is planning, followed by lots more planning. There are enough differences between the NT4 domain and a properly setup Win2K network that you have to understand and plan. That doesn't help you much I know. But then again, there are lots of questions that you need to ask, and find answers for in order to get this right.

Your best bet is to go over to the Micro$soft site and look for the planning guide. There are are also a number of books on this subject, my favourite being from New Riders. These types of resources will help you put together a list of questions. Once you have answered these, then you can start to put together your network, deploy your DCs and your DDNS servers, and start migrating your workstations.

DDNS stands for Dynamic Domain Name Service (DNS). You get this when you use Microsoft DNS and itegrate it with AD. Benefits are secure update, replication , etc.

As far as you question. Synch a BDC with you PDC and take offline. Perform upgrade to PDC. Upgrade any additional BDC's (except the one that you took offline). Upgrade RAS servers. Upgrade Member servers. There are plenty off resources out there documenting how to do this. Start with www.microsoft.com/technet for the docs.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you're asking for an awful lot of details, and for an awful lot of specifics, and...

In short, and "we" all hope you don't it mean it this way, but you are asking for all of us to do the bulk of the work of designing your W2K network. And for "free" at that.

For a mere 150 TR points, I think you've received a reasonable amount of info to get you started.

Implementing a W2K network can be a big task. Good Luck.

Although I would like to make it easier for you by providing you with all the quick answers, this is just not a good way to get up-and-running with Active Directory.
I suggest you take some classes or do some heavy reading on all the topics to see in the various answers.
So either attends some training, buy the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, or start your browser and go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000 and start learning!
You will thank me in the end, when your network is working properlydue to your knowledge about Active Directory. If you are not going to invest some time in learning about Active Directory, I will know for a fact that you will run into trouble sooner or later... And that's a promise!