Resume to NT domain

[William Yuen]

Dear all,

I am planning to upgrade our NT4 domain to Windows 2003 Active directory. We
have one PDC , one BDC and 2 member server. There are less than 100
workstation in single subnet and no Wins Server and both PDC & BDC are also
DNS servers.

I am going to add a new server which first join the NT domain as a BDC and
then promote to PDC. After that the new PDC will be upgrade to Windows 2003
domain controller.

I just want to make sure if any thing goes wrong during upgrade to Windows
2003 DC or if the new Win 2003 Server breaks after upgrade successfully, can
I simply promote one of the BDC to PDC and resume the original NT4 domain
without affecting the current operation ?

Any suggestions and comment are welcome

Thanks

William

 

[Robert Moir]

Dear all,

I am planning to upgrade our NT4 domain to Windows 2003 Active
directory. We have one PDC , one BDC and 2 member server. There are
less than 100 workstation in single subnet and no Wins Server and
both PDC & BDC are also DNS servers.

I am going to add a new server which first join the NT domain as a
BDC and then promote to PDC. After that the new PDC will be upgrade
to Windows 2003 domain controller.

I just want to make sure if any thing goes wrong during upgrade to
Windows 2003 DC or if the new Win 2003 Server breaks after upgrade
successfully, can I simply promote one of the BDC to PDC and resume
the original NT4 domain without affecting the current operation ?

Any suggestions and comment are welcome

You will of course be taking backups of all the servers before starting the
upgrade process? Good idea, thought you would! I certainly wouldn't proceed
without one.

I'd also take one of the servers offline during the initial upgrade process
so that you will have one that has its domain information "frozen" at the
point before the upgrade started - what i often do for this is actually
install an old workstation as an NT Server BDC before starting the upgrade,
then once its installed, service packed, and sync'd with the rest of the NT
4 domain, shut it down and put it in a cupboard. Then you can upgrade all
your "real" servers with some peace of mind.

 

[William Yuen]

Robert, Thanks for your rcomments

I did think about taking a spare BDC off line before upgrading and wonder if
the reminding BDC's still keep it original NT BDC status after the PDC is
upgraded to Win2003 DC.

As we still have an Exchange 5.5 running on a NT BDC and we have to keep the
domain in Win2003 mixed mode for about one year before we upgrade Exchange
5.5 to Exchange 2003 in next year. So there will be only one Win2003 DC in
the domain for the coming 12 months without any redundancy. That's why I
want to know the impact to the system in case of Win2003 DC breakdown. Can I
resume the mixed mode domain back to a NT domain.

William