Upgrading NT4 PDC to W2K Server

[Roger Nelson]

I'm getting ready to upgrade my Windows 4.0 PDC to our
first Windows 2000 Domain Controller in our company.
This server also is the only WINS server on our
172.16.30.x network which is connected over a WAN to
networks 172.16.20.x and 172.16.40.x. All three networks
have seperate WINS Servers running on their Windows NT4
PDC's. Is there anything I need to do before or after
the Windows 2000 server upgrade to allow users and the
other WINS servers to continue to be able to communicate
with the upgraded WINS Server?

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In

I'm getting ready to upgrade my Windows 4.0 PDC to our
first Windows 2000 Domain Controller in our company.
This server also is the only WINS server on our
172.16.30.x network which is connected over a WAN to
networks 172.16.20.x and 172.16.40.x. All three networks
have seperate WINS Servers running on their Windows NT4
PDC's. Is there anything I need to do before or after
the Windows 2000 server upgrade to allow users and the
other WINS servers to continue to be able to communicate
with the upgraded WINS Server?

As far as WINS is concerned, nothing needs to be done, it should fall into
place. DNS is another story if you are not already running DNS, when you run
DCPROMO you will need to.

The main thing you need to do, is set the Domain suffix on the NT4 TCP/IP
properties to the name of the DNS domain name you are going to use for the
Win2k domain before you upgrade.

 

[Roger Nelson]

Thank you for the reply. We are currently using our ISP
for DNS to communicate with the Internet and for our
Exchange Server 5.5. We do have a registered Domain
Name, lets call it abc.com. Can I use abc.com for the
DNS Domain Name for the Windows 2000 network or will I
have to choose something like def.abc.com? Actually, we
have three sites which are connected via a WAN. Could I
name the first Windows 2000 Domain and Domain Controller
def.abc.com and then the other two sites W2K Domains and
their first Domain Controllers ghi.abc.com and
jkl.abc.com? I thought it would just be easier to manage
if I kept the name of the company, abc, and then used the
individual location names, def,ghi, and jkl to seperate
the Domains.

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In

Thank you for the reply. We are currently using our ISP
for DNS to communicate with the Internet and for our
Exchange Server 5.5. We do have a registered Domain
Name, lets call it abc.com. Can I use abc.com for the
DNS Domain Name for the Windows 2000 network or will I
have to choose something like def.abc.com? Actually, we
have three sites which are connected via a WAN. Could I
name the first Windows 2000 Domain and Domain Controller
def.abc.com and then the other two sites W2K Domains and
their first Domain Controllers ghi.abc.com and
jkl.abc.com? I thought it would just be easier to manage
if I kept the name of the company, abc, and then used the
individual location names, def,ghi, and jkl to seperate
the Domains.

Just about anyone you talk to will have an opinion on this subject. I will
say this, there are some workarounds you have to use if you choose the same
name internally as your public domain name. This is because you have
conflicting name spaces. In actuallity this can be used to enhance security
because you are putting your internal name space in the shadow of your
public name. So you have to set up shadow DNS, adding names from the public
name space to the internal name space; i.e. www, mail and ftp.
This does allow users to logon using there email address, here is
Microsoft's input on the subject.
254680 - DNS Namespace Planning
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;254680