I’m trying to replace my old DC with a new one.  The old one is pretty old –
about four and a half years old, PIII with U160 drives running W2K Server
with the latest service pack.  It recently experienced a hard crash when its
UPS failed a year too early when its batteries failed.   I managed to get it
back and running with the exception of the print queues that the DLC protocol
uses for its HP printer ports to which I’m performing a work-around for now.

First let me say that I have run “adprep /forestprep” and “adprep
/domainprep” on the current DC a short while ago thinking I would just
upgrade the old server’s OS and, hopefully, wipe out any bugs and glitches
that W2K has acquired from this and a previous crash last year.  As usual,
things change, we scrounged around, found 1000 bucks and got a new server off
of eBay on which I’ve installed W2K3 Server.  I hope this adprep-ing hasn’t
knocked me out of this maneuver.  Also, the current DC is a do-it-all machine
running DNS and DHCP which the new server needs to do as well.

I’m trying to divine the means by which I can transport the AD data to the
new server running W2K3, sp1, and retire the old server.  In what I realize
must be a grossly over simplified description does this sound like what I
should be performing:

1. DCPROMO the W2K3 server to install AD and acquire the AD data.  Since DNS
is running on the old server, to which the new one looks to for DNS, there
shouldn’t be a reason yet to install DNS on the new one, true?

2. DCPROMO the old W2K server to demote it.  Here I have to assume there is
the means in the DCPROMO tool to identify the server you want to promote.  I
do have one other W2K server running as a member server acting as our
Internet Proxy right now so it ought to ignore it when forming a list of
candidates … I hope?

3. Install DNS on the W2K3 server now promoted to DC-FSMO - but only as a
secondary DNS?  Or would it be possible to shut the whole network down (only
about 25 workstations, all off on the weekends) and install DNS (DDNS) and
DHCP on the new DC, reassigning the old IP address of the old DC to the new
DC and having it assume the DNS and DHCP roles when you bring everything back
up?

This should, I hope, I pray, preserve the old domain and user and computer
accounts as they were with no one noticing anything different.

I was hoping to do this over this weekend but after much reading in Mr.
Minasi's book I think more reading is in order and probably the NEXT weekend
is more like it.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Dana

The following article explains how to replace a DC:
-- http://www.msresource.net/content/view/24/47/


The article doesn't cover ADPREP.  That is adequately covered elsewhere and
now here:
-- http://www.msresource.net/content/view/60/47/


But you've already done that so should be good to go.  Unless you have R2.
In which case read the above again.  You don't mention exchange, so this is
pretty easy.

Keep reading Mark's book.  It's great!

Thank you Paul!  I will certainly add this site to my Favorites without
question.

No, we don't use Exchange in the office here as our ISP is our mail server
host.  And since I'm still waiting for the coffee to kick in - what is R2?

Dana

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Ah, yes.  R2 seems to be the latest and greatest W2K3 Server product.  No,
I've just got the 2003 Standard Edition CD I received last year.

Thanks again.
Dana

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No problem.  Glad to have helped.

Hi Paul,
I'm in exactly the same situation, however I wanted to ask you if the
following is possible as a quick alternative.

Is it possible to clone the 2000 DC and restore onto a brand new server,
then upgrade the new server to 2003? I've never done migration before, only
have setup new servers and am now faced with a very old DC that needs
replacing and am looking for the easiest and quickest way to do this, without
having to re-install applications, etc.  The current environment has 2000
Server, (2 servers, one being the file server, the other being the exchange
server).  The exchange server is not going to be upgraded, it's going to be
taken off the network altogether, as they only have 6 workstations and we
have now changed them to POP3 e-mails, they are not going to get any bigger,
so we didn't see the need to upgrade the second server (it's very very old),
hence we are taking it down altogether.
So I need to transfer the settings, files, apps, etc from one server only,
and would like to keep everything exactly the same.  The main problem we have
is that they are using a third party software for opticians, which would need
to be re-installed and re-configured, workstations would also need to be
re-configured.  But if I was able to keep everything the same, the
workstations wouldn't know the difference.
Is this possible?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Monica.


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Hi,
Apart from my query above, I went through the articles recommended with a
fine toothcombe and have a question, doing all the steps that the article
states, will this transfer AD, i.e. users and computer, so that users don't
lose their profiles. I read the Move the FSMO Roles to a Differrent Domain
Control, will this step do the job or do I need to do something else?
Thanks, any help would be greatly appreciate.
Monica.

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