Upgrade from NT4 PDC to Active Dir on new machine

[Guest]

I am planning an upgrade at one of my client's sites and want to get some input before attempting this. The configuration is (1) Windows NT Server 4.0 SP6a which is a PDC and runs DHCP and has Exchange 5.5 SP4, (2) Windows 2000 SP3 Servers one of which hosts a mission critical SQL application and terminal services and the other Win2K server does file services and runs a proxy server. All of these systems a members of one domain (on the NT4 PDC)

We want to retire the NT server which means I need to do a couple of things
1. convert to Active Directory (which I will admit scares me from my experiances with this
2. install Exchange 2003 on the last Win2K server and migrate the users and messages from the Exchange 5.5. to i

The questions I have are -
Is it easier to upgrade the old server to accomplish the active directory migration of can I somehow upgrade to AD on a new machine using the old machine? - or- Perhaps I should actually ask, given the background - how should I accomplish this

Does the exchange migration really enter into this? Perhaps that's a whole seperate issue and I should be focused on the AD migration - then that will be a seperate issue

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can give me
Bill

 

[David Brandt [MSFT]]

I'm not an expert on the exchange part of it other than to say that 5.5 will
run fine in a win2k domain. As far as the upgrade goes, there are a couple
of choices for you. You can either; upgrade the existing pdc, then add
another replica win2k dc, then demoted the original if you didn't want that
physical box still runnning as a dc. or you could install a new bdc into
the domain running on the physical box you want to be your eventual 2k dc,
promote it to pdc, and then upgrade that machine. You might want to have
one bdc installed as backup, and it doesn't even need to be a server, but
just a good desktop as all you want it for is to have the sam etc on it in
case of emergencys. There is a lot of info on our web site about this, as
well as some below, but look at;
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/howtobuy/upgrading/default.asp

296480 HOW TO: Upgrade a Windows NT 4.0-Based PDC to a Windows 2000-Based
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=296480

215416 HOW TO: Upgrade a WINS or DHCP Database to Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=215416

298107 HOW TO: Upgrade Windows NT Server Version 4.0 to Windows 2000 Server
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=298107


--
David Brandt
Microsoft Corporation

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I am planning an upgrade at one of my client's sites and want to get some

input before attempting this. The configuration is (1) Windows NT Server
4.0 SP6a which is a PDC and runs DHCP and has Exchange 5.5 SP4, (2) Windows
2000 SP3 Servers one of which hosts a mission critical SQL application and
terminal services and the other Win2K server does file services and runs a
proxy server. All of these systems a members of one domain (on the NT4
PDC).

We want to retire the NT server which means I need to do a couple of things:
1. convert to Active Directory (which I will admit scares me from my experiances with this)
2. install Exchange 2003 on the last Win2K server and migrate the users

and messages from the Exchange 5.5. to it

The questions I have are -
Is it easier to upgrade the old server to accomplish the active directory

migration of can I somehow upgrade to AD on a new machine using the old
machine? - or- Perhaps I should actually ask, given the background - how
should I accomplish this?

Does the exchange migration really enter into this? Perhaps that's a

whole seperate issue and I should be focused on the AD migration - then that
will be a seperate issue.