Switching from PDC to BDC

[Dedcrayzie]

I'm hoping someone will be able to help me with this one. We've a Digital Prioris XL Server 5133, WinNT 3.51 and running Winframe 1.7, currently setup as the PDC. The BDC is currently a Dell PowerEdge 4300 running WinNT 4.0, Svc Pk 6. What I'm trying to do is to make the Dell the PDC and the Digital as the BDC. My questions are as follows;

1. Is it a fairly straightforward process?

2. What would I need to put in place for the swap?

I would be most grateful if I could be pointed in the right direction.

Thx

 

[SteveTheGeek]

You'd probably do better putting this in an NT forum, as I don't think the hardware matters much. With NT4, it'd be a matter of simply promoting the Dell, and the Digital will automatically demote itself. I'm not familiar enough with NT3.51 to say for sure that it's the same thing, though.

 

[MSClusterGuy]

OH MY GAWD! I thought I was the only one on earth left with an NT3.51 Citrix box still in production.
Legacy Apps... you know the story...

Anyway, I would suggest to remove the existing PDC from the wire to preserve it if you need to back out of the BDC promotion if things go wrong.

1: Disconnect the 3.51 PDC ethernet connection (Leave it running
2: Promote the BDC, check the logs, reboot, check the logs again
3: If things look bad, this is your first back out option ... reboot the NT4 box with the 3.51 PDC on the wire. the NT4 box should see the original PDC and automatically demote itself.
4: If things look good, leave the old PDC off the wire and check to see if all other bdc's are synchronizing (Look for Netlogon events in the log)
5: Attempt logon with a few workstations and if all is still good proceed with step 6
6: Plug the 3.51 PDC back in, it will see the existing PDC and ask you if you want it to to demote itself.
7: If the 5.51 box does not co operate, and still wants to be the pdc here is another chance to back out by rebooting the NT4 box with the old PDC on the wire, The NT4 box should see the existing PDC and demote itself.

Hope this helps