DNS and DHCP question while planning for upgrade from NT 4.0 to W2K

[Vivian Giang]

Hi,
I have 1 PDC and 1 BDC in NT 4.0 environment. Because my
PDC is too small in Hard drive capacity, so I can't
upgrade my PDC. Therefore, set up one more BDC running NT
4.0 with a bigger hard drive and plan to upgrade this BDC
to W2K primary controller, and slowly upgrade the rest of
the servers.

I plan to syn all server first. Then take my PDC off the
network, then promote one of my BDC with a big Hard drive
to PDC. Then upgrade it to W2K primary controller and run
it in mix mode.

However, my NT 4.0 PDC now has DNS and DHCP running, but
not my other 2 BDCs. If I upgrade my BDC, which does not
have DHCP and DNS will have problem. THerefore, I'm
looking for a way to export or transfer the config and
info from my current PDC to my newly promoting PDC. Can
any one advise how can I do that or whether this method is
possible?

thanks for your help

Vivian Giang

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

Sounds like the easiest way to move the zone info to the new server is to
create a secondary of the zone on the new server, let the zone transfer
happen, then make it a primary, then upgrade it. Make sure you change the
DNS addresses to point to the new server for all your machines. If you have
your ISP's DNS address too, remove them (because AD requires this) and use a
forwarder for efficient Internet resolution. If using DHCP, you would need
to change Option 006 to only use the new DNS server for your clients.

Hope that helps.

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Regards,
Ace

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Ace Fekay, MCSE 2000, MCSE+I, MCSA, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Active Directory

 

[Michael Johnston [MSFT]]

The DNS part is simple. Just setup a secondary zone on the server that will be the W2k DC and transfer the zone from the NT4 DNS server. Once it's
transfered over, set the zone type to Primary. Moving DHCP is a bit more complicated but not difficult. For more information on moving DHCP, please
reference 130642 How to Move a DHCP Database to Another Windows Server http://support.microsoft.com/?id=130642. This article covers it.

Thank you,
Mike Johnston
Microsoft Network Support

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