What's the best way to migrate from a Windows NT domain to Windows 2000/2003 domain?
I have an old Windows NT domain in need to upgrade to Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory. There is one PDC and two BDCs. What should my next steps be?
Solution 1:
My approach would be:
- Make sure the PDC and BDCs are in sync
- Switch off the BDCs and disconnect them
- Upgrade the PDC to Windows 2000, giving the domain a FQDN (ie from FOO to foo.bar.local)
- Make sure that the domain members, ie other servers and desktops have converted properly
- Wipe the BDCs, install windows 2000/2003/2008 from scratch, add to the domain and then promote to DC
- Tranfer the FSMO roles away from the ex-PDC
- Demote the ex-PDC
- Take the ex-PDC out of the domain, rebuild it from scratch as Windows 2000/3/8
- Promote the ex-PDC back to being a DC
- Move the FSMO roles around until you're happy.
Note that if you're planning on doing a hardware upgrade at the same time, then there would be a few differences.
If anything goes wrong before step 5, you can bring up a BDC, promote to PDC and keep using your NT4 domain until you've fixed the problem.