Consolidate two XP farms

[jockojem]

Hello

I wondered if anyone has encountered the following and may have some advice?

I have been asked to consolidate two Metaframe XP 1.0 FP2 farms to ease management and pool licenses. The boxes are in seperate domains (not in the same forest) with a two way non transitive trust between them.

How best might I approach this?

Thanks for your help.

Jem

 

[ascotta]

OK here goes.

1st unlikely that anyone has had to do this.
Have ou XP?
Have you got SQL as data Store or Oracle ?

You may have to reinstall 1 of the boxes will that present an issue and add the licenses to the joined farm. Would that be an issue ?

 

[jockojem]

Hi Ascotta

Thanks for your reply.

I am picking things up on this one as I go along. This is my first week on the job and both farms were set up by independent vendors to support their apps.

Yes - we are running XP FP2. Both farms appear to be set up using the default Access database.

We should be able to rebuild a box if need be. Re-adding the licenses shouldn't be an issue. Neither farm is live as such as the applications are still being tested.

Do you think it is an issue that the boxes (5 in one farm, 3 in the other) are in two seperate domains? We certainly want to keep the smaller farm at arm's length.

Jem

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Using Active Directory Forests
If you use Windows Active Directory, Citrix recommends that all MetaFrame XP
servers in a server farm belong to the same Active Directory forest. If your server
farm has MetaFrame XP servers in more than one forest, users cannot log on using
UPNs.
UPN logons use the format username@UPN identifier. With Active Directory,
UPN logons do not require a domain to be specified, because Active Directory can
locate full UPN logons in the directory. However, if multiple forests exist in the
server farm, problems can arise because the same UPN identifier can exist in two
domains in separate forests.
Important Because there is no efficient way to perform account resolution,
MetaFrame XP does not support UPN logons if a MetaFrame XP farm spans
multiple Active Directory forests.

So it should be no problem but clients schould log on either by NetBios name or FQDN.

And since neigter farm is live i would rebuild the complete farm!!!

 

[jockojem]

Thanks for your advice Captain. The issue with redundant UPN logons shouldn't be an issue.

You say rebuild the farm. Can you elucidate? My thinking was initially to take the servers out of one farm using chfarm (the one in the "arm's length" domain) and add them to the other larger farm.

I just wonder what issues might arise (if any). All my experience up until now has been with 1.8 and I am concerned that there may be issues with eg the IMA that I am not considering.

Thanks

Jem

 

[ascotta]

Let me run this one by you.

Migrate the 3 to join the five (less work to do). can be done the other way if you wish.

Steps.

1) on servers that do NOT hosts the data Store run the chgfarm command. and reboot.
2) remove Metaframe from the server that hosts the msAccess database and reinstall metaframe to join other farm.
3) I would also suggest moving to a SQL / oracle database as well.


Create a database, do DSMAINT MIGRATE on all servers. Please check and read FAQ from Citrix on this. It does work, I have done it a couple of times for our Customers. Be carefull though and follow instructions. (CTX677542).

 

[jockojem]

Great - thanks for the suggestions Ascotta. I'll be trying this is the next couple of weeks - I'll let you know how I get on.

Jem