Setting up Active Directory upgrade Test environment

[icaro2020]

I have a large NT4 domain that I'd like to upgrade to AD with an in-place upgrade. Before doing so, however, I'd like to run some pilot upgrades on a test environment. To do this I'd like to duplicate my environment as closely as possible. Here's that I was thinking of doing:

add a new BDC to the domain, synch it, take it offline, promote it to pdc, rename the domain, change all the service accounts etc to reflect this change of domain name, and bring the system back online as a pdc for a new domain which mirrors exactly my existing domain.

My question is about the last part of this - if I bring this renamed domain pdc back onto the same subnet as the original production domain controllers, will this interefere, corrupt or cause any sort of confusion for the production domain controllers?

 

[skialta]

First off, you can't promote an rename a domain under NT4 or 2000AD for that matter, only Win2003.Also, I would not bring that system back onto your production due to the unknowns...Good luck

 

[MTVW]

skialta is right.

No rename available. Do not put it on the prod network.