Well things are starting to get MUCH busier for our little IT department here. After years of meetings with pretty charts and graphs, debating with the local bean counters on costs and our lead programmer throwing out the buzzwords like “ROI” to the top dogs we finally are beginning our migration planning from NT 4 to Server 2003, along with completing all our clients getting upgraded to XP Pro. Along with setting up Exchange 2003 (oh yeah and upgrading our SQL Server 6.5 db to SQL 2000).
Unfotunately we won’t be able to get AD running in 2003 Native mode, as the highest we can upgrade one server (due to the fax server software on it and the company’s unwillingness to spend the money for the new version that supports 2003) is Windows 2000.
Now we are looking at in-place upgrades on some of these boxes, so its not gonna be as simple as normal SOP would generally be doing a clean install.
We are looking at all the “gotcha’s” to consider — and we are reading a lot, including using the Microsoft Migration Guide as a main point of reference.
I was wondering if there is anyone experienced with this type of migration and any things they found a long the way that possibly made life difficult or made them say “I wish I knew that was gonna happen….”.
Also from my research I’m finding that I have to nuke my raid volumes on NT 4 because Server 2003 won’t recognize (ie. Migrate them)? Is this true?
Thanks for any help.