Can I put SBS 2008 on an already in place domain?

[chewyone]

Hi,

We're taking a look at SBS 2008 as it has a lot of features we would like to use as well as Exchange.

We have a domain in place that is controlled by a W2K machine, can SBS be put in place on our domain without being the controller and will it play nice?

Thanks!

 

[nicolasvdb]

This is not supported by Microsoft. You can join your SBS 2008 in to an existing domain when you are running windows server 2003 sp2 with the migration tool for sbs 2008.

The problem is, exchange 2007 needs at least funtional level 2003 native to work and not any w2k dc in your domain.

You could join a w2k3 server in you network promote it to dc and demote all off your w2k dcs. And migrate to sbs 2008.

 

[markdmac]

Chewyone,

SBS has to be the DC and FSMO Role Holder. You can join SBS to an existing domain for the purpose of domain migration but there is no upgrade path from Win2K to 2008.

I would recommend that you do the following. Download a trial version of ShadowProtect Server from StorageCraft. This will let you backup and easily virtualize your existing server. (You will find this software so useful you will want to purchase it) You will also want to download a trial version of Windows 2003. Isolate the virtual server and perform an upgrade to 2003. From there you can join the SBS 2008 server to the domain using the virtualized domain. In the event that anything goes wrong, your real server is still intact and running. Once the SBS 2008 has been setup, disconnect the original DC. Next gracefully remove the virtual server from the migration AD and you can now plug the SBS 2008 into the live network.

You can rejoin the current DC as a member server afterwords if it has any applications running on it that need to stay in production.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

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