Stuck in Win 2K Upgrade

[anilgupte]

Okay I ran into a question that stumped me. I am upgrading my Windows NT 4.0 PDC to a Win2K DC. The question comes up in the installation that do I want to (a) Create a new domain tree (b) Create a new child domain in an existing domain tree.

All I want is that the entire domain should migrate especially the users and their profiles. I don't need anything fancy - just a small network with 12-14 users that needs some authentication to login and access files on the file server.

I am sitting and looking at the screen and puzzling through the explanations on screen but cannot make head or tail of it. I hope someone replies soon, because I cannot go home and leave this in Limbo while I research this - and it is pretty late at night.

Thanx in advance.

Anil

 

[Antony13]

This option is down to the fact that Windows 2000 has a new concept with domains. Previously in NT4, you only had a domain as a security boundary and if you wanted other domains to be able to access resources in it, you had to set up a manual trust relationship.

Windows 2000 introduces the concept of forests and trees where one or more domains can make up a tree and all the trees make up a forest. All these domains share certain things e.g. the Schema and they all have transitive trust relationships automatically created between them.

For your situation, it sounds like you only need one domain, so you are creating the first domain in your tree thus you want option (a). In the future, you can add domains to this tree by installing Windows 2000 on another server and choosing option (b) to create a child domain under that tree.

I would seriously recommend you read information on Active Directory planning and implementation from the microsoft website at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies/directory/ad/default.asp#section10)

before going ahead with this (even with the small number of users you have) as it's a good idea to get the design correct otherwise you may need to rebuild at a later date.

Cheers, Antony