Hi -- I'm looking for some general tips regarding upgrading a W2K domain to W2K3.
The current situation: I inhereted a Windows 2000 domain. There are two primary servers -- one just a W2K file and print server, and the other a W2K Exchange2K server. Both of these servers appear to be domain controllers, with replication set up between them. The file and print server is the Global Catalog server. In addition, there is one other domain-member server, a W2K Server which runs SQL Server 2000. All of the client machines (25 of them) are running Win2K Pro or WinXP Pro.
Ultimately, I'm going to be building this network up into a high-speed WAN-linked, two site, one-domain network with the second site being basically a disaster recovery location housing a replicate of the fileserver and a replicate of the exchange server. However, I don't want to do all this work on Win2K -- for obvious reasons, I'd rather move up to W2K3 and then expand out to the second site with replication, etc.
All the W2K3 servers will be new servers -- I have budget for them. So the question is, what is the right way to go about this? If I want to replace both of the domain controllers with W2K3 and replace the Exchange Server with Exch2K3 as well, what order do I do this in? Do I upgrade to Exch2K3 while still on the W2K machine? Do I upgrade just the primary Domain Controller/GC first and let it run that way for a while? There's lots of possibilities, and I'm not sure what the right order/methodology is.
Any specific tricks/things to know about (adprep, etc.)?
Thanks to everyone in advance of the help. I truly appreciate your ideas.
The current situation: I inhereted a Windows 2000 domain. There are two primary servers -- one just a W2K file and print server, and the other a W2K Exchange2K server. Both of these servers appear to be domain controllers, with replication set up between them. The file and print server is the Global Catalog server. In addition, there is one other domain-member server, a W2K Server which runs SQL Server 2000. All of the client machines (25 of them) are running Win2K Pro or WinXP Pro.
Ultimately, I'm going to be building this network up into a high-speed WAN-linked, two site, one-domain network with the second site being basically a disaster recovery location housing a replicate of the fileserver and a replicate of the exchange server. However, I don't want to do all this work on Win2K -- for obvious reasons, I'd rather move up to W2K3 and then expand out to the second site with replication, etc.
All the W2K3 servers will be new servers -- I have budget for them. So the question is, what is the right way to go about this? If I want to replace both of the domain controllers with W2K3 and replace the Exchange Server with Exch2K3 as well, what order do I do this in? Do I upgrade to Exch2K3 while still on the W2K machine? Do I upgrade just the primary Domain Controller/GC first and let it run that way for a while? There's lots of possibilities, and I'm not sure what the right order/methodology is.
Any specific tricks/things to know about (adprep, etc.)?
Thanks to everyone in advance of the help. I truly appreciate your ideas.