Duplication of Sites within two separate AD Domains? 1

[batocaster]

I currently have one domain on a subnet of 10.140.0.0. I am bringing up a second domain forest on the same subnet to facilitate a domain name change for our company and to move from a Windows 2000 environment to a Windows 2003 environment. All hardware will be new, so creating the new domain makes the entire process very simple. However, I have eight AD sites connected by WANs. I won’t be able to make changes in all sites at once, so my plan is to leave both domains running until all WAN sites are connected to the new domain. I have most of the issues figured out but still have a couple of nagging questions.

One issue that I have is that the current domain (we’ll call it xyz.com) is running DNS for itself as well as for the new domain (we’ll call it abc.com) because we changed company names a few months ago. So, DNS zones for xyz.com and abc.com are both currently running in the xyz.com domain.

The new domain forest that will be brought online will be called abc.com. It will host its own DNS server for the abc.com zone. I don’t foresee problems running both abc.com DNS zones on two different domains as clients for either domain will simply point to the appropriate DNS server – plus the xyz.com domain will be phased out in just a couple of months at which time its abc.com zone will be removed. Where I think I might run into an issue is with the WAN connected sites for each domain.

We organize site names geographically and I would like to retain the same names for the sites in the new abc.com domain. Since xyz.com and abc.com are separate domains, thus having access to their own Sites and Services snap-ins, would there be any problem using duplicate names for the sites? As each WAN site is changed from the xyz.com domain to the abc.com domain, the old connections will be severed and the site and site links will be removed from the xyz.com domain. Can anyone let me know if my thinking is correct of if doing this will cause problems? Thank you.

 

[mrdenny]

Why not do an inplace upgrade from Window 2000 to Windows 2003, then use the support tools from the Windows 2003 cd to rename the domain name?

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[batocaster]

We are dealing with an older domain controller that doesn't have enough hard drive space to upgrade from 200 to 2003. Plus, since I have eight WAN connected sites that need to be changed at different times, I have to continue running the old domain for them to be able to connect and remain functional. Moving to the new domain with new hardware is the easiest way to accomplish this. It also allows me to start clean with a new system without bringing all the "baggage" from the past six years along to the new domain.

 

[PScottC]

The site names are contained in the _msdcs child zone for each AD. Since the 2 domains are not going to reside in the same forest, then you will not have any conflicts with the names of the sites.


PSC

Governments and corporations need people like you and me. We are samurai. The keyboard cowboys. And all those other people out there who have no idea what's going on are the cattle. Mooo! --Mr. The Plague, from the movie "Hackers

 

[batocaster]

PSC - Thanks for confirming this for me. I really appreciate your help!