Re: Migration from NT4 to SBS 2003

PM <PM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have a client with the following situation:

They currently have a Windows NT4 domain controller. 3 other servers
are Windows Server 2003. Clients are all Windows XP.

They purchased a server and SBS 2003.

Which I hope you'll rebuild from scratch, if it's OEM preinstallation. I
suggest you try posting in m.p.windows.server.sbs for a lot of good help
with SBS. If you haven't worked much with SBS be careful, as you have to do
things its way (using wizards) or it won't work right.

Our goal is to completely
retire the NT4 domain controller.

My question: What steps can we take to accomplish this? From my
research, I do not believe that the SBS server will be able to join
the NT4 domain.

Correct.

I do not want to create a new domain and worry about
profile migration, etc.

You may have to; there is no direct upgrade possible. The fact that you're
moving to SBS makes this slightly more complicated than if you were moving
just to W2003.

You could look into www.sbsmigration.com for info on a "swing" migration,
but that will require a preliminary upgrade to from NT4 to W2000 Server,
then change to native mode. Then upgrade to W2003 and AD. Then you may be
able to use the Swing Migration technique.

ADMT is another possibility, but I think that's a pain. If you don't have a
huge network (and you really can't, if you're moving to SBS) you may find
all of this more trouble than it's worth. I'd probably prefer a clean AD
setup myself in this case; lord knows what's lurking in their existing
domain that won't transfer over properly. Getting your data from the old
server to the new one is a cinch (robocopy is my fave). You need to create
your computer accounts & user accounts using the SBS wizards anyway, unless
you want to do a boatload of work to fix them afterwards....

User profiles are a minor headache, which you can mitigate as follows -

While the workstation is still in domain A, create a local user account.
Log in as the local user account.
Log out.
Log back in as an account with admin rights (but *not* the real domain user)
Go to control panel, system, advanced....in User Profiles, click the
Settings button
Select the domain user's profile, click on Copy To, and browse to the new
local user's c:\documents and settings\username folder.
Click OK.
Click the Change button in "Permitted to use" and select the domain\username
account you just copied [1]

Close out.

Log in as the local user and make sure the settings look right. If so, you
should be good to go...disjoin the computer from the NT domain, making sure
you know the local admin credentials....and then run the /connectcomputer
script. when you're ready to join the SBS domain. When asked which local
account settings you want to assign to the 'new' domain user on domain B,
select the local user you just created.

[1] To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that step is necessary, but I
usually include it.


Are there steps to take to migrate the domain from NT4 to SBS 2003
without completely creating a new domain? If so, can someone point
me in the right direction?

As mentioned, try the SBS group....but I hope this helps.

Thanks
PM



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