File Servers / Naming

[markbayliss]

Hi all,

We just migrated our file servers from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 R2. We dont use DFS or anything but we need to update GPO, User properties in AD to reference the new file server names.

What do people do to avoid this in the future? Do you use DFS namespace or do you have another DNS name for each file server rather than using the server name.

Thanks in advance.

Mark

[john]

I have in the past been known to use the exact same name again and IP Address etc on a new hardware platform. Basically copy it across under a new name then once its done rename the old FS and the new FS, swap the IPs and jobs a goodun works well.

Microsoft also make a Fileserver Migration Toolkit that works well and handles a lot of name changes, DFS stuff etc worth looking at for future migrations.

[srochford]

As well as using DFS (which is a good idea!) you can use DNS aliases - eg your real fileserver is called FS_01 but your users connect to student_home and DNS just aliases that to FS_01

When you install FS_02, you copy all your content on to that, change the DNS alias and users carry on connecting to the same name. You can't do this in the middle of the day without rebooting all the machines (because they will have the old IP cached)

Watch out for problems with "strictnamechecking" - Connecting to SMB share on a Windows 2000-based computer or a Windows Server 2003-based computer may not work with an alias name has details. Not sure if this is still relevant for Server 2008 but I think it is.

[glennda]

I just either tend to do what John Does - or just bulk update ad

[pete]

Fileserver migration toolkit from Microsoft or DFS. Wherever possible we use the DFS namespace because it makes life easier. Even if you've only one server using it -being able to call \\domain.whatever\dfsroot\apps\foobar\foobar.msi removes faff.