VERY tough AD Installation Issue

[gliao]

windows 2000 server cannot be a PDC in a NT 4 domain. The
best it can be is a member server. If you are trying to
migrate your NT 4 domain to Active Directory you need to
follow the migration step outlined when you activate your
new Active Directory.

 

[Dan]

.. Just a suggestion, if you want this new server to
eventually be your Windows 2000 AD domain controller you
may want to look at doing something like this....

1) Install Windows NT 4.0 SP6a to the new server and make
it a BDC.
2) Promote this server to PDC of the NT 4.0 domain
3) Perform an upgrade of the server to Windows 2000
(doing so will upgrade your NT 4.0 domain to Windows 2000
Active Directory)
4) Before you start step 1... Do a little research to
make sure that you will not blow things up on your domain!


- Make sure clients are ready for the upgrade (your nt
4.0 systems are at least SP6a, you take the time to
install the dc client on 98/95 systems, etc...)

- Make sure that any client/server applications you have
will be able to live in the AD domain (most vendors will
let you know if the application has been tested and or
works in a Windows 2000 Ad environment.

- Make sure "service" based applications are ready (many,
such as SMS would require you to install service packs or
other updates in order to work in the AD domain)

- Make sure that if you are running Exchange 5.5 in your
environment that you are not using the default LDAP ports
for Exchange... AD uses 389.... Exchange 5.5 uses 389...
see any problems there?


-end rant

Dan

 

[Tim Haltiner]

Thanks for the step-by-step. Being that the New Win2k
server is fresh and new, would it make more sense to re-
install NT 4 Server, add it to the NT4 Domain as a BDC and
then upgrade it to Win2k and run DCPromo to make it the
PDC?

Thanks,
Tim