urgent pls help on merging the network together

[d1551]

I have 2 networks-admin and curriculum on vanila 2000/2003 on separate domain. i have been told to join them together to make one single domain.
both domains are separate subnets and IP. the admin is nated to a class c ip address. i have in total 10 servers with a new cluster server to help sepate the network.
Have anyone out there single handedly join his domains togerther so that Sims and other application can run in the classroom whiteboard? Can you please enlightened me how you did it.
Or if you know of any external contractor that has done it succesful please help.
secondly we also want every students and staff to be able to log in from home through the browser and access all ther work on the network.
somebody has told me is possible to do this by combining 2003 enterprise server and linus enterprise as the TS clients to do this. he said this is to avoid expensive citrix cost
any ideas

[Grommit]

1/ what are the IP and subnet masks of both Domains (we need the bigger SNM)

2/ Are the Domains physically linked ?

The rest should be easy..

As you take the biggest IP range and make that your "New" main Domain..

You DCPromo your "old" Servers and add them to the New domain and then take off and add your workstations to the "New" Domain..

I would assume that you admin domin would be the one to go..

Where I SIMS.. you might have to reinstall SIMS again as if the mapping is to the defunct Admin newwork then your paths will be wrong..

I think thats right.... or am I ;-)

As for the remote access..

You do not need Linux as Server 2003 comes with Remote Access or Terminal Services ..

Or you cold use 3rd Party Software like Ranger Outpost

[apeo]

As you are joining the domain, do you really need another DC... if you dont then all you really need to do i migrate the users and you could use tools like Active Directory Migration Tool to do that, then use a script or bat to move home directories to the new server (assume you want them moved) and use something like admodify to update the user info. Then remove and add the computers to the new domain.

BTW if you didnt already know you dont need to merge domains for sims to work.. all sims needs is access to the sims server and a mapped drive setup. With that said if you did join the domain, i dont think you need to do much to get the machines moved to the new domain to work with sim as the info shouldnt have changed.

To get access to home directories and shared directories from home via the web is relatively easy. You could use a 3rd party package like wexlite web explorer so you get a web interface or you could just use web folders (easier to setup if you have windows 2003 servers). I think there are threads on this subject on edugeek already but i dont remember the links.. will do a search later.

Edited: Forgot to add that you will need your isp to resolve to your web server.

[d1551]

Thanks very much for the contributions so far. it is very informative. Did any one of you have or know of any script that can move the home folders from old domain controllers to the new one.
secondly we have drive letters such as "h " which is common to both domains for all users on the network. what should i do?

[Grommit]

Thanks very much for the contributions so far. it is very informative. Did any one of you have or know of any script that can move the home folders from old domain controllers to the new one.
secondly we have drive letters such as "h " which is common to both domains for all users on the network. what should i do?

I think XXCOPY does the trick

[GrumbleDook]

If your staff have one home area on the admin network and one on the curriculum I would suggest you copy the folder from the admin network inside the curriculum home area ... renaming it (eg ateacher get a home area the has 'ateacher-admin' in side of it.) I presume that is what you meant about home areas being on H?

[apeo]

After copying the directories across, you will just need to set the permissions so have a look at this thread:

Mass setting NTFS permissions

Or you could do something like this (not production level but should work):

Dim oFS, oFolder, WshShell, strPath
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set oFS = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
'change local path
strPath = "d:\users"
Set oFolder = oFS.GetFolder(strPath)


ShowFolderDetails oFolder

Sub ShowFolderDetails(oF)
Dim F
	for each F in oF.subfolders
		'change Domain
 		WshShell.run "xcacls " & strPath & "\"  & F.name & " /T /C /P " & chr(34) & "Domain\Domain Admins" & chr(34) & ":F /y",,True
		WshShell.run "cacls " & strPath & "\" & F.name & " /T /C /E /G system:F",,True
		WshShell.run "cacls " & strPath & "\" & F.name & " /T /C /E /G administrators:F",,True
                                'Change Domain
  		WshShell.run "cacls " & strPath & "\" & F.name & " /T /C /E /G Domain\" & f.name & ":C",,True
	Next
End Sub

'clean up
set oFolder = nothing
set oFS = nothing
set wshshell = nothing

You will need to run this on the server and make the changes to match your network. It will bring up a quite a few Dos windows, dont worry its supposed to do that so just let it carry on till its finished and it should work quite happily.

I am assuming that you dont have a clash in usernames and the home folders are named according to the username.