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Upgrading to W2K

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by ltheodoru

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I am finally going to start upgrading from NT to W2K server this summer. As a school system, we do not have money to purchase 2003 server licenses, but did receive 10 free W2K server licenses. I have set up a test bed with a couple of old servers, and intend to work out the procedure there first. I do have a couple of questions. I will only be able to upgrade the PDC and one BDC this summer because the other four BDC's need to be replaced with new hardware first, so we will be using NT domain emulation for a while. I will synchronize and take off line one BDC before starting. Should I do the upgrade on the PDC off line or leave it on line during the upgrade? While working in mixed mode, should we avoid using the NT 4 User Manager, or can we continue to use it since most of the BDC's will still be NT 4?

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by jschein

You can leave it online... Now, the question is, are you going to upgrade it, or wipe it out and start anew?

That is very important! If you just upgrade instead of a fresh install, that leaves your C drive to be full (not ready for service packs, updates, future installs, etc.) Reccomend a fresh clean install to ensure everything on that system is only what needs to be there.

No, you can still use NT4 User Manager. Just ensure you goto the server manager in nt 4 and sych prim domain if you do any changes there.

Win2k server uses Active directory user manager. Fast and simple. Usually take about 10-15 seconds to propegate its information to local servers and up to 30 seconds for remote servers.

Congratulation on the upgrades from nt.

by ltheodoru

The system drive on this server is 4GB, and currently has 2.67GB free. In addition to being the PDC, it is also the DHCP, WINS, and print server for the high school. My biggest problem is the time constraints that I have. The superintendent's office refuses to give me access to the buildings after they are closed, so that means that I will need to do this in one evening. That is why I would prefer to do an upgrade rather than reconfigure all those services. In my test bed, I have built an NT 4 server with a very similar configuration and am even using a copy of the SAM database from the production network.

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