I have a site, that I want to Add a second server to, problem is the old 2003 box might have a few unknow issues, takes over 1 minute to login to the system, and often pauses without reason.
So, the Old server is a 2003 standard box, with SP2 on it, I have Exchange Server 2003 also on it.
My thoughts are:
1. Add new server to the domain via dcpromo, install Exchange Server on it, move User & Email data, adjust the users likes from the old server. Then I would demote the old server, Dcpromo the New server to PDC, reload the old one and install it as a BDC with DFS and SQL Replication (SQL not existing yet). Leaving the Exchange on the New server.
2. Install the New server, with a new .local domain name. Setup Exchange Server, Create the user base, copy the data from the old server to the new. Use EXMerge to pull old Exchange Data, and manually reinsert that data to each users new account on the NEW server.
Then I would need to touch all 33 systems to manually remove them off the old domain, reboot, and attach them to the new domain.
Using option 2, I feel I would insure less longterm issues that might pull from the old domain, like the ‘long login problem’, but It would take twice as long unless someone has a better suggestion.
The site is about to add a $12,000 app with SQL Express to it, and having the most on speed, and No outages or troubles is where this needs to go.