Moving NT PDC to new Windows 2000 domain

[Srinivas Acharya]

Hi All,
I have one NT PDC which I want to new windows 2000 doamin.
I don't want to upgrade this PDC to windows 2000 and I want
use this as file server. IS it possible?..

Regards,
Srinivas Acharya

 

[Chriss3 [MVP]]

This server can not have the role PDC in a Active Directory Domain.

You can use the server as a member file server, but it must be demoted as
PDC, the PDC role can only be set to a Windows 2000 Domain Controller or
2003

--
Regards
Christoffer Andersson
Microsoft MVP - Directory Services

No email replies please - reply in the newsgroup

 

[Simon Geary]

No, in order to be a file server in your 2000 domain the server would, for
all practical purposes, need to be a member of that domain. The only way to
get an NT 4.0 PDC to join another domain is to rebuild it.
If you absolutely cannot rebuild the machine you could always just create a
trust between the PDC and the 2000 domain but this is an unnecessarily
complex solution and not one I would recommend.

 

[Jim Singh]

It is possible but first you have to demote the NT pdc to a member server,
since you cant have an NT pdc in an AD environment.
-Jim

 

[Simon Geary]

You cannot demote an NT 4.0 PDC to a member server. The only option is to
rebuild it from scratch.

 

[Paul McGuire]

You will need to build the new server as a NT4 BDC and then promote to PDC
and demote the old server to BDC. Perform the upgrade on the new server to
2000 AD. You will not beable to demote the NT4 Server from DC but if can
still be a file server while being a BDC.

HTH

 

[Srinivas Acharya]

Hi,
Thnaks for replying.
I was also thinking like this only. I can demote existing
PDC to BDC. But I have doubt whether it is possible to add
that BDC to totally new doamin of windows 2000(AD). I
don't want to upgrade NT BDC to windows 2000 server since
it running very critical applications. I want add same NT
BDC to new doamin of different name from the existing one
as BDC or member server.

Please I request you to give me an idea.

Regards,
Srinivas Acharya

 

[Enkidu]

No, you cannot transfer a BDC to another Domain. If you want to create
a new 2000 AD Domain you can't then add the BDC to it. You can, as
someone suggested, build trusts between the old Domain and the new
2000 Domain. You could end up with a one machine NT4 Domain!

Whatever way you look at it, you need to, somehow, eventually move the
application to another machine. For one thing, the hardware wont last
for ever!

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Guest]

Can you upgrade the NT pdc to 2000, then run dcpromo to demote to a member
server? I am not sure, I have the same issue and I am not sure if that is
possible...anyone know?? Or is rebuilding the ONLY option.

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

I guess the question is how many partitions do you have and on what
partition are the user folders/files?

You should be able to do this but you will loose all of the domain
information ( Domain user account objects, Domain group objects, etc. ). I
am normally not a fan of the upgrade ( well, not for an extended period ).
Is the server hardware 'acceptable'? Meaning, is it a PII-300 with 128MB of
RAM or a PIII-1GHz with 512MB of RAM?

HTH,

Cary

 

[Doug Gabbard]

Most definitely you can demote your old (PDC) following the steps
below:

Scenario:
Single NT4 PDC (no BDCs)

Goal - Windows 2000 Domain with new DC and current PDC only acting as
a Member Server.

Steps:
Add NT4 BDC to NT4 domain
Promote it to PDC
Demote old PDC to BDC
Upgrade the New PDC to Windows 2000
Upgrade the BDC (the old PDC) to Windows 2000
Let it replicate
Run DCPROMO on the old PDC to make it a member server.

This will work fine. However. I would recommend a clean install at
some point so that any registry hacks or off-normal changes on the NT4
box are not carried into the 2000 servers.

Ideally, I would add a third box to the mix to get a clean
environment. So add the following if you have enough hardware.

After the domain is 2000 as described above,
Add the 3rd box as 2000 DC so you will have 2 DCs
Demote the upgraded one.
Flatten and rebuild the upgraded DC
Rejoin it and promote it back to DC status
Hopefully, you can keep it as a DC. A single DC Domain is not a safe
configuration. If it fails and you do not have backups - it is all
gone. If you have a second DC, simply rebuild the failed DC and run
DCPROMO and it is back in business.

Doug