Migrating Domains into one Forest

[globalstrata]

Hello Guys,

I am involved in a migration project that requires consolidating several domains into one forest. So I wanted to see what suggestions I could get. My forest is 2003 and I will be bringing other 2003 domains as well as 2000 and NT.

1. For 2003, we have thought about maybe renaming the domain but I have only been able to find domain rename examples within a forest. In my case, it would be bringing a domain from outside the forest to become a child of my final forest. In addition, it seem that the rename process may not be that reliable due to the amount of servers involved and wan connectivity issues, which could cause the changes not to sync.

2. For 2003, we have thought about inter-forest migration, but I am not able to find a lot of information about this.

3. We would love to stay at the end with the same NetBIOS name, but I am unable to find a way to just rename the NetBIOS name (I cannot have the same NetBIOS name during the trust relationship of both forests.

4. When migrating the Exchange servers, we have the same Exchange Organization name.

Does any one has any suggestions or know about any white papers that may help me with any of these problems?

Thanks,


Gladys Rodriguez
GlobalStrata Solutions
Computer Repair, Website Design and Computer Consultant
Small Business Resources

 

[ITPangaeaArchitect]

You will have to go with a new domain name (both fqdn and NetBIOS)...

The only other option is to bring up another new forest with a different name, migrate everything into that forest, and then from that forest into the intended forest containing the same name as the domain you originally migrated from.

so it depends on how much work you're willing to do



-Brandon Wilson
MCSE00/03, MCSA:Messaging00, MCSA03, A+
Sr. Infrastructure Management Analyst
Distributed Systems Engineering
ACS, Inc.

 

[globalstrata]

Do you know of any documentation that backs this up? I just need to find out for sure.

The reason I am asking is because I know that Windows 2003 is supposed to relay more in DNS than NetBIOS. So I know that one can create the trust using DNS instead of NetBIOS. In addition, I know that computers can be joined by using DNS and user can login using user@domain.com instead of the NetBIOS Domain.

I am trying to test this using some VMS, so I may know what happens in few qeeks.

Thanks for your answer and time,


Gladys Rodriguez
GlobalStrata Solutions
Computer Repair, Website Design and Computer Consultant
Small Business Resources
Anime, Manga and Video Games

 

[ITPangaeaArchitect]

it depends on the tool. ADMT inherently requires the NetBIOS name to be different. Some third party tools may not require the NetBIOS names to be different.

I was one of the domain migration specialists (along with PKI and DFS) at Microsoft on the Enterprise Product Support Directory Services team for two years, is that good enough documentation lol

There is alot out there, but namely, the domain migration cookbook. There is not much different between Windows 2000 and 2003 as far as domain migrations go. The only difference will be the new functionality available in ADMT V3..so there's your reading material

-Brandon Wilson
MCSE00/03, MCSA:Messaging00, MCSA03, A+
Sr. Infrastructure Management Analyst
Distributed Systems Engineering
ACS, Inc.

 

[globalstrata]

Thanks Brandon.

A question about ADMT. Does it work consolidating two 2003 forest? It seems to me that in only works between versions.

Thanks,


Gladys Rodriguez
GlobalStrata Solutions
Computer Repair, Website Design and Computer Consultant
Small Business Resources
Anime, Manga and Video Games

 

[ITPangaeaArchitect]

it will do:

NT --> 2000
NT --> 2003
2000 --> 2000
2000 --> 2003
2003 --> 2003



Migrating from a 2003 forest to another 2003 forest is essentially the same as coming from Windows 2000 to 2003

-Brandon Wilson
MCSE00/03, MCSA:Messaging00, MCSA03, A+
Sr. Infrastructure Management Analyst
Distributed Systems Engineering
ACS, Inc.