Migrating DCs From 2003 to 2008

[techie08]

Im sure sure if this has been covered yet but i am looking at migrating from 2003 to 2008 R2 for our 2 domain controllers and move to 2 completly new Rackmount servers. This is really to cater for the possibility of mover to windows 7 in the future.

What would be the process involved in doing this as i have not done this before.

Thanks

[bio]

I would do the following :

1. Backup your 2 old DC's (full backup + system state)
2. Install windows 2008 R2 on both new DC's
3. Run DC promo on both new DC's
4. move FSMO roles to the new DC's
5. Make both DC's a Global Catalog
6. Migrate DHCP services from old DC's to new DC's
7. Move any manual made shares from old DC's to new DC's
8. Check if policies, netlogon and sysvol shares aer replicated to new DC's servers
9. Check if AD object are replicated to new Dc's
10. run DCPROMO on both old DC's to demote them
11. remove 2 old DC's from the domain
12. Raise your forest and domain to windows 2008 R2
13. check, check & check if everything works ok.. (login, etc..etc..)

regards
bio..

[DAckroyd]

are you currently running anything like Ranger, Winsuite, R# (sorry can't sware on here) or anything like that? if so have you checked they support servers running 2K8R2?

[techie08]

I would do the following :

1. Backup your 2 old DC's (full backup + system state)
2. Install windows 2008 R2 on both new DC's
3. Run DC promo on both new DC's
4. move FSMO roles to the new DC's
5. Make both DC's a Global Catalog
6. Migrate DHCP services from old DC's to new DC's
7. Move any manual made shares from old DC's to new DC's
8. Check if policies, netlogon and sysvol shares aer replicated to new DC's servers
9. Check if AD object are replicated to new Dc's
10. run DCPROMO on both old DC's to demote them
11. remove 2 old DC's from the domain
12. Raise your forest and domain to windows 2008 R2
13. check, check & check if everything works ok.. (login, etc..etc..)

regards
bio..

Thanks Bio.

Would i keep the domain controllers names the same? or doesn't it matter

No i dont run Ranger or anything like that.

[bio]

Just give them new names. We switch between DS1 DS2 etc etcc.. to DC1 DC2 etc etc..

regards
bio..