Advice re possible domain migration

Without getting into too many specifics, we have a number of needs / annoying problems that can be solved in 3 ways.

1) A series of dirty hacks.
2) Migrating accounts, servers and data from one of our domains to the other.
3) Building a new 2008 domain and migrating accounts, servers and data from both domains to the new one.

All are doable, but I'm leaning towards #3 despite it involving the most work. I can build the new domain under Xen and migrate user accounts and data to the new domain and get everything well-polished before I do a final account/permission sync and robocopy and make it live. Being able to do the bulk of the work without interfering with everyday end-users makes this rather attractive.

Thoughts?

It really does depend on the nature of the problems, however, generally speaking I would agree doing things properly and putting the extra work in does pay off. It reduces your workload longterm and provides a top reliable network. Something I would recommend every network administrator to adhere to :)

Assume the problems are the usual ones you have with a separate curriculum and an admin domain. It's a historical division which, while it does have certain advantages regarding security and access to data, it's becoming irritating and most of those advantages can be replicated with sufficiently granular security.

Generally speaking, you should migrate the admin side to the curriculum then apply appropriate permissions. Then upgrade to Server 2008 at a later date.