How to promote BDC to PDC?? 1

[IT2000]

Dear People,
I need to promote my Backup Domain cOntroller to a Primary DOmain COntroller.
I was told there is a utility that automates disabling services accociated with the PDC and enabling them on the BDC and then promotes the BDC to PDC, is this true?
Any suggestions will help! Thank you all for the help!
Mike

 

[Davetoo]

There are no PDC's or BDC's in a Windows 2000 Server environment. Servers are either DC's, or member servers. If you have a W2K member server that you want to promote to a DC, you simply run DCPROMO to accomplish this.

 

[IT2000]

First of all, thank you for the quick reply.
Yes, I did mistake the PDC and BDC situation with W2k Servers, so let me re-phrase the question.
One of my servers has DNS and other important services running on it. I want to move all these services from one server to another, I was told there is a program that can do exactly this, is this true.
If yes, then what is the program?
If not, what are other means of doing this?
Again, thank you fo your help!
Mike

 

[EdwinSKH]

What you want to do is seize FSMO roles.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;255504

 

[gurner]

If the original machine is still running you won't need too sieze FSMO roles, just transfer them to the new machine.

They can be found in Sites and Services, Users and Computers and Domains and Trusts, Right click on the Domain Name Space and select 'Connect to Domain Controller' and connect to the DC you want to take the roles.

Right click on the DN Space again in Users and Computers and goto the Operations Masters and change all the assignments in the tabs for Users and Computers to the new machine

In Domains and Trusts Right click on Active Directory Domains and Trusts and select Operations Master and do the same sort of steps.

And then in Sites and service browse down to AD Sites and Services>Sites>Default-First-Site-Name>Servers>Server Name>NTDS Settings (right click) and tick Global Catalog for this new machine and untick for old machine under old machine name.

I think the Schema role will need to Seized because i could never figure out how to do it in these MMC snapins

Go to a DOS prompt

type 'NTDSUTIL'
Type 'ROLES'
Type 'CONNECTIONS'
type 'CONNECT TO SERVER servername.domainname.co.uk' (server that is going to take role)
type 'QUIT'
type 'SEIZE SCHEMA MASTER'
type 'QUIT'

all done

Depending on the size of the LAN you can just take down notes for all the vital services such as DNS and DHCP, configure them on the new machine and then shut them off on the old machine (probably best to do this out of hours)

Don't forget to change the DHCP settings to reflect the DNS Server change.

Most machines won't even notice the move, when they logon in the morning because DHCP IP Allocation is by Broadcast they will get their new IP allocations (with new DNS allocation in) as they logon

Did this once during the day and all i requested was that people reboot their machines on Win2k and XP boxes and asked the Win98 machines to run a batch file with 'IPCONFIG /RELEASE' and then reboot for good measure.

had a down time of literally minutes for a 50 strong LAN

any other services that need moving?

these are the easiest (including WINS) as all you are reilly doing is starting again.

if the LAN runs into several Hundred then the downtime will be longer.

Just remember you have literally only a few very breif minutes to have 2 DHCP Servers running to gether before someones machine might run down its TTL and request another IP