NT 4.0 to Win 2k Server

[Patrick G.]

I am about to upgrade a Win NT 4.0 Domain controller to
Windows 2000. Every other member server is a Windows 2000
machine already. This is a production Domain that hosts a
website for external clients as well as internal
employees. The current format for the name of the site is
domainname.com. If I upgrade the domain controller to
Win2k and name the domain domainname.com (same as the
website), will this cause me DNS problems for internal
and/or external clients attempting to reach the website
which has its own IP and is hosted on 2 member servers in
a NLB Cluster?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Patrick G.

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In
It will but it can be worked around. Maybe you should name the domain
domainname.local, then it will not cause a conflict. Hint you can still add
domainname.com to AD Domains and Trusts as a UPN logon domain so users can
still logon by (e-mail address removed) this will cause less confusion and it
won't cause any name conflicts in DNS causing you to have to use split
namespace DNS.
The internal DNS will host domainname.local and the external DNS will host
domainname.com.
After you upgrade the NT4 PDC to Win2k go to the system control panel on the
Network Identification tab make sure that you have the primary DNS suffix
set to the correct Suffix BEFORE you run dcpromo.
The best way to do this is to set the domain suffix in TCP/IP of the NT4
before you upgrade, the name you have in the domain suffix in NT4 is adopted
as the Win2k primary DNS suffix after the upgrade.

 

[Guest]

Kevin, just like to clarify that you meant the internal DNS namespace is domainname.local but the logon domain is domainname.com. But would it still cause confusion as the FQDNS name for server will be known as
server.domainname.local, correct me if i am wrong

Best regards

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In

Kevin, just like to clarify that you meant the internal DNS namespace
is domainname.local but the logon domain is domainname.com. But would
it still cause confusion as the FQDNS name for server will be known
as
server.domainname.local, correct me if i am wrong?

Best regards

Most users don't get beyond knowing machine names by the NetBIOS name, that
is what they see in Network places, if TCP/IP is setup correctly the domain
name will be appended to all queries, no matter what the domain is.
One thing it won't confuse is the system DNS resolver, if you have two
namespaces with the same name, it is going to cause problems especially for
the VPN users that can see both namespaces simultaneously. One through their
internet connection the other through their VPN connection.