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Windows NT 4 & Windows 2000 mix network

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by ronicolleen

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About to configure a Windows 2000 Server to replace our BDC in our Windows NT 4 network and then promote the old BDC to PDC. -- Is this NT4 thought regarding PDC/BDC and not part of Windows 2000 networking? I have only had to deal with a small network with one W2K Server - so I did not have to mess with PDC/BDC issue -- which may be a non-issue in W2K server/networking.

Can I get easily by with one W2K server acting as the Primary if our network has about 40 users? (mainly NT4 clients) -- we have 4 other servers (SQL, print, etc.) -- but they are "member" servers.

Thanks for your info.

4 replies

by areets

I can see that you are probably thinking only NT4 and not W2K. Some prerequisite thoughts: will you use AD and if so, it will probably be a mix and not native environment. Plan explicitly otherwise you will run in to problems at configuration and atfuturee changes.

TSP

by ghstinshll

It's time to migrate to Active Directory. the reason for this is because you've already purchase 2000 server and have (not totally) messed up your environment. The trick is going to be with migrating your data and permissions and all.

If you7 don't want to go through the learning curve of learning how to upgrade/migrate into native mode Win2000, then you can always install NT onto the server that you have 2000 on and just make it a BDC and promote it (if you really want that DC as the PDC. Leave the one with the most power as your BDC, as they really do more work than the PDCs do.

by curlergirl

I'm not sure if I'm reading your question correctly - but there are two ways to look at it:

1. If your desired end result is to remove the existing PDC from the network entirely but keep your domain as an NT4 domain, then simply promote your current BDC to PDC and remove the old PDC from the network. You can't, however, have a Win2K server as a BDC in an NT4 domain - it can only be a member server.

2. If your desired end result is to remove the current PDC AND upgrade your domain to a Win2K domain, then you can do it one of two ways: (a) (SAFER method) install the new server as an NT4 BDC in the current domain; then remove the current PDC and promote one of the two BDCs to PDC, upgrade that one to Win2K first, which will upgrade your current NT4 domain to a Win2K AD domain; then upgrade the second server to a Win2K DC in the same domain (no PDC/BDC in Win2K - all DCs are created equal, pretty much); or (b) (FASTER method) Promote the current BDC to PDC first, remove the old PDC from the domain, upgrade the new PDC (old BDC) to Win2K AD, then install the new server as a second DC in the Win2K AD domain.

by curlergirl

Do you really need a second DC?? No - it is not necessary, but it is really a good practice even in such a small network. It's a matter of redundancy - if one DC goes down and you have another one, your network keeps chugging along. If you don't have a second DC and the one you have goes down, you're completely out of business.

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