Moving File & Print to temporary server

[tfarley]

Hi,

I need to rebuild my W2K File & Print server without any downtime for the users. As a temporary measure I intend to copy all files and settings to a temporary server with the same name, recreate all file and print shares (including AD published ones) and then rebuild the original server, finally swapping back everything once finished. Given that there are AD published printers, will this work? I am sure it will but I wondered if anyone had any similar experience.

Thanks for help in advance.

Tony

 

[martoine]

Tony,
Currently we are using login scripting to assign 25+ printers to our users based on group membership. We have also installed these same printers (with the same names) onto another member server in the domain. The printers are shared and available on the master, unshared on the member server. To take down the master and still provide print services all I do is unshare the master's printers, share the member server printers and change the script referencing the master server to the member server and have the clients reboot. No downtime.

For File services, use DFS - I'm currently using DFS for our user profiles and it works beautifully. The only rub is that you'll have to map the DFS to a single drive letter on all clients.

Marty