Upgrade from NT4

[jduawa]

ok...here is the situation...I have a PDC and a BDC...that need to be upgraded to win2K, the PDC ids alos getting a new RAID controller and Hard drives...I want to retain all user accounts, hence the "upgrade" path....this is my plan...run a backup of the sam DB and other important folders, and create an ERD...turn off the BDC...run an upgrade on the PDC.....rebuild the BDC from scratch to win2k and have it sync up with the upgraded PDC....turn off the PDC install the new drives and rebuild the PDC from scratch with win 2k....Is that the correcvt approach to this situation
Thanks

 

[jduawa]

Can anyone help me out?? I think this is the correct approach but want to be sure.
Thanks

 

[Stannerack]

Why not just promote the BDC to a PDC. Backup all the data on the old PDC to the new one with all shares and file permissions intact.

Shut down the new BDC, install the drives and RAID etc...

Install Win2k server onto it, servicepacks, drivers etc...

run DCPROMO to turn it into a domain controller with AD.

Setup your AD with organisational units etc...

Download the ADMT (Active Directory Migration Tool, and drag the user settings from the NT PDC into your new AD server.

tip: on NT usermanager you can make bulk changes like profile paths and home directories. Make those changes to how you want them to be before your migrate the user data into Win2k. You can only change 1 user at a time with the Active Directory tools with Win2k.

Then you can upgrade the BDC to a Win2k server. The choice is yours then whether you want it as a standalone or a member server on the AD.

 

[jduawa]

I was thinking of that same thing the last night...I also am running exchange 5.5 is that going to throw a wrnech in the works...currently it is on the pdc....I was thinking of promoting the bdc to a pdc and the pdc to a bdc, upgrade the pdc to win2k, and then rebuild the bdc witht hte raid....keep the pdc the GC server but rebuild it so it has a fresh install on it