Adding W2K server to NT4 domain 1

[embee]

Hi..I just got a new W2K server
We have a NT4 domain and I wonder if it is wise to activate the active directory. There is a older NT4 server which is PDC and DHCP server and we have a NT4 BDC which is going to be replaced by this new server.

Is there a simple way to migrate to W2K with active directory or can I expect lots of trouble ?

 

[globalstrata]

If you are not planning to upgrade the PDC to 2000, I will not install AD. If you are migrating everything to active Directory, this is what I would do:

- Remove everything from the new server
- Install NT 4.0 in the new server as a BDC of your current Domain.
- Once all the replication has occurred, promote the new BDC to PDC. (This means that the current PDC, will automatically be demoted to BDC)
- Take New PDC out of the Network and upgrade to Windows 2000 with AD.

If everything seems to be working fine, connect the server back to the Domain. Then upgrade your older servers. The upgrade of your old servers could be done later on but don't wait too long since you will see some problems.

If it is not working fine, then all you have to do is not to connect the new server to the network and promote your old PDC back to PDC and everything would be as it was when you first started.

Since I imagine that you will have Win 98/NT machines, make sure you keep a WINS server and configure DNS to use WINS to populate the database. Also, If you install DHCP in the new server, make sure there is no other DHCP service on in the server else, the service will shot itself down. In addition, if you install DHCP in the new server, make sure that you configure DHCP to update DNS always.
Gladys Rodriguez
GlobalStrata Solutions

http://www.globalstrata.com