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Advice needed!!!

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by peter johnstone

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Situation: Secondary School with 500 pupils & 55 staff. Current Network PDC & BDC NT 4 (SP6a), 100 x Win 98 Workstations on one domain. There are 4 main IT classrooms each with 16 workstations and the remainder in small groups. 85 workstations hard wired, 15 wireless.
We have the following new equipment available: 2x Servers with Server 2003, 30x workstations with Win XP Pro. 70 of the old workstations will run XP Pro.
I want to make a ?fresh start?, but will need to move the pupil\staff folders and passwords over to the new domain, which does not necessarily need to have to have the same name. The changeover will need to be done in stages, room by room, but the current facilities will need to run during changeover.
My aim is:
Set up 1 new 2003 Server as Domain member, copy all data across from NT PDC, shut down NT PDC & BDC, promote 2003 Server to DC (AD, New Forrest), add Users Accounts, add the second new 2003 Server as DC and set all existing workstations to run from the new servers. I can then roll out the workstations at my leisure. Is this pie in the sky? I need some sound practical advice from experienced Net Admin \ Managers who can steer me in the right direction and point out pitfalls to avoid so that I don?t make a total mess of the project!

9 replies

by shawn

I think your plan is very much achievable.

1. You don't need to make the new 2003 (I'll call it Server1) a member of the existing domian. You should be able to copy all the data you need to - try to connect to a share on the old NT system, and it will prompt you to present a username and password. Use a username and password that has access to the share (in the format of DOMIAN\username) and you can then copy and paste to your heart's content.
(The reason I recommend not making this server a part of the existing domain are problems that can occur when you attempt to run dcpromo.exe and turn it into a domain controller. Pre-existing domain membership may present some interesting and frustarting problems.)
2. As for users, the only way to migrate user accounts is to upgrade an existing PDC to Windows 2003. Something I would suggest as an alternive would be to create a spreadsheet with all the user properties you need to set, save the file as a .csv file (comma seperated values), and import it using the csvde.exe utility at the command line. Google "csvde" to learn more about it. Also, keep in mind that you cannot set new passwords for user accounts created this way - set them all as blank or something, and set the property on the user account that forces the user to change it the first time they log on.

Hopefully this helps. Let me know how it goes.

by peter johnstone

Thanks for your advice and taking the time to answer. Everyone helped, but I think you have given me the way to go foward.

by kinetechs

Hi,
You can use Microsoft's Active Directory Mogration Tool (ADMT). It's a free product and the documentation included will give you a few different scenarios to pick from. makes it very easy to migrate users, password, and data.

Cheers!
~Sean

by evkuo

I generally agree with the above, but if you have your heart set on maintaining the existing domain and shares, you could install the new server into the domain as WinNT/BDC, promote it to the PDC and then upgrade that box to Win2K/AD. That way, if something tragic happens, you still have your existing setup.

by fenaikh

Hi

You can use The Microsoft ADMT ver2 or a third party utilites such as
NEtIQ Domain Migration Administrator (acutwally microsfot has a licince
of NETIQ to build ADMT which may have a problem with group migration).

Domain Migration Administrator
http://www.netiq.com/products/dma/default.asp

DCDiag and NetDiag in Windows 2000 Facilitate Domain Join and DC Creation
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=265706

Good luck

Mohamed

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