backout plan - upgrade AD to 2003

[Guest]

We are preparing to perform in-place upgrade from windows 2000 to 2003 AD.
We have single domain, one central location and several remote office
locations (each remote office has Domain Controller).
We have VoIP integrated into our Active Directory (Cisco call manager).
There are high-level concerns as to how to Rollback if the upgrade is not
successful.
A suggestion has been made to shut down all regional office domain
controllers, and then perform the forestprep, domainprep and the Operating
System upgrade on the schema master and the infrastructure master at our
central location (all role holders are at the central location).
Once satisfied that this has worked properly, the regional office domain
controllers will be turned back on.
The basis for this suggestion, is to limit potential "damage" to the remote
offices, in the event that the upgrade fails at some point.
FYI, I am concerned about this approach, as I have reviewed some of the
microsoft migration-related documentation, which states that the Forestprep
should be completed before the domain prep is executed. I am wondering if by
turning off the remote servers, we are contributing to a failed upgrade, in
our efforts to PREVENT a failed upgrade.....
We are planning to test this theory in a test lab environment......
Please feedback your comments or recomendations regarding this proposed
strategy.
Thank you.

 

[BCE]

Your idea of shutting down the remote dc's is fine, being able to do that is
good.
What you should do is shut them down, do a complete backup of the servers to
be modified as you will have to do a restore to clean out the changes.

Domain prep cannot be run with doing forestprep, or at least not without
causing your self issues.

Doing this all in a lab is a very good idea.

Is this a single domain?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the comments BCE.
Yes, this is a single domain.
Let me clarify my previous comment regarding forestprep/domainprep....I
would still perform forestprep then domainprep on the schema
master/infrastructure master at the central office.
My concern is that with the regional office servers being shutdown during
this time, the forestprep would not be able to replicate its changes to the
regional servers..... Same would be true with domain prep.......Would the
regional servers "recover" or recognize the schema and domain changes
correctly when they were powered back on? Is this a big deal?
Hopefully I was a little clearer that time.....
Thanks again for your comments.

 

[ptwilliams]

If you make changes to the schema, are happy that all is well, and then
power on the other DCs those DCs will replicate the Schema changes just like
any other replication. There shouldn't be any issues.

If you are not happy, you can restore the box to it's previous state and
power on the other DCs and everything'll be as it was -there'll probably be
some replication, but otherwise everything should be as it was prior to the
powerdown.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Paul.
One followup question...in one of the Microsoft documents, it suggests
disabling outbound replication during the forestprep process as a protective
measure, but it does not offer this suggestion for the domainprep process.
In your opinion, could we leave the regional servers powered on, and disable
outbound replication during the forestprep AND domainprep processes? Would
this achieve the same goal as shutting down the regional servers?

Thanks for your feedback......

 

[ptwilliams]

Yes, you can try that. However, one or two people have claimed that things
still replicate. Although this is quite likely a misconfiguration.