Going from RM netwrk to Vanilla

[Kyle]

One of the primary schools i go to has asked about moving away from a RM 2003/Xp network to a standard vanilla network.

Has anyone done this?
What are the issues/implications of this?
Pros and Cons?

What would they want to do this?

[Ric_]

There's a few other people planning on doing this at the moment... try a quick forum search (or google the site) and you will find all sorts of things

[PiqueABoo]

Con: They're throwing a lot of things they paid serious money for down the drain and then paying even more money to eventually get it back to roughly the same place with the label "vanilla".

How can a PRIMARY afford that? Why do they want to do it ? What do they think vanilla will fix?

a few other people planning on doing this at the moment

And hands up all the Primary people - the context is very different.

Have done this for two primary schools in the past. Found the most painless way was to purchase a new server and set up a new domain.

Create policies, Move / create new users set up shares etc

Then make new workstation images etc.

Re-Use RM server as something else more useful.

This is just the way I have done it in the past and works for me.

[djm968]

I have done this for several schools and found the best way was to run a co-existing "vanilla" domain along side RM for a while. You will need another DC but there are many benefits when migrating using this phased approach.

Very Brief Outline

Phase 1
Setup new “vanilla” DC
(Domain name can be changed back to the original after you decommission old RM DC)
Set-up the environment
Copy or create user accounts
Create polices etc.
Set-up a few workstations
Test, test and test some more

Phase 2
Decommission RM DC
Configure all workstations for the new domain
Test, test and test some more

A migration using a Phased approach like this will have minimal impact on the production environment and allow for comprehensive testing. A successful and well implemented migration should also have little impact for the end user so that their environment is basically the same and retraining is only minimal if indeed necessary.

The biggest impact will be supporting the environment without RM to hold your hand, I would also strongly advise against tackling a project like this if you have no scripting skills. To provide some of the functionality and environment customisations that RM provide will require scripting knowledge.

[CheeseDog]

In the same situation here at a primary but I can't see the point in doing it just for the sake of it.

If I were to do it at some point in the future I'd go with the above method.

Not sure i'd run them side by side. I'd test then switch over once I was happy. Probably in a summer holiday.

Is it really worht the hassle for them, until the kit needs replacing?