upgrade with minimal downtime?

[Mason]

Hello,

Is it possible to do this senario?

1. make new BDC, sync with PDC
2. Pull BDC offline, promote to PDC
3. upgrade new PDC to 2K
4. Pull old PDC offline, and have users login to new PDC
5. use ADC to tie-in exhisting Exchange server on a 2K box?

?

TIA!!

Mason

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

I'm not an expert on this as I generally don't do upgrades-in-place, but I
think that would work. Is the existing PDC also doing file/print? Because
I'm paranoid, I'd make a new BDC, promote it to PDC & take the old PDC
offline, upgrade the new PDC to W2k, and so forth. If the answer to the
first question is yes, I'd migrate (copy, not move) all data & recreate
print queues onto the new PDC before taking the old PDC offline...

 

[Mason]

Hello LAN

Thats a pretty good idea. The current/existing PDC is a
File server right now. The clients working data is on a
RAID5 silo which is external from the PDC its self. So, Im
not too worried about loosing the actual server/PDC. It
can be rebuilt i suppose and promoted. Thanks for the
help, Im just trying to make a Plan so I wont be tearing
my hair out in the long-run