Transfer Roles from Old Server to New?

[audiophile03]

I am glad I ran across this forum from a google search trying to find information on the above subject. It seems this forum has a plethora of knowledgable people to help me out here.

 

I have taken on the position of systems administrator for the current company I work for. Our old Dell server had a massive hardware failure and I ended up having to rebuild the whole network/roles/users from the ground up on a temporary server (crappy desktop machine!) until we finally got the funds ok'd to get a new server. The temporary server is running Server 2008 R2 and has been running with no issues for a couple months now.

 

I finally got our new server in the mail, got Server 2012 R2 set up and running. I joined it to the network and promoted it to a domain controller. All shared files (department folders, public folder) have been transferred to the new server and are shared. I removed all the sharing on the same folders located on the temporary server so that the folders on the new server are the only ones accessible.

 

The AD and GP stuff has been copied/mirrored to the new server. I have the users set up to where all the desktop, documents, pictures, etc. are saved on the temporary server in a "RoamingProfiles" folder. The policy and user configuration was originally set up to where it points the users profile folder location to the old server.

 

I need to first transfer all roles so that the new server is in control of AD, DNS, and GP. I also need to figure out the easiest way to make sure that users profile data is copied/saved on the new server without losing any of the data that is saved on their profile folder. Basically, I need to make it to where I can remove this junk temporary server and have the network continue to operate. I already have all the roles and features installed that the old server has.

 

I am still going to college getting my IT education and have taken a Windows Server class so I am pretty familiar with the Windows Server operating system. Any help is VERY much appreciated!!

 

Cheers,

Jared

Edited February 10, 2015 by elsiegee40

[DavetheITguy]

Is the temporary server a domain controller ? if so, you could replicate data between servers by joining it to a forest as a secondary DC. This would then replicate all users, Group Policies, NETLOGON, DHCP, DNS.

 

Once everything has been copied over you could remove the old server and make the new server a GC default Domain controller. I would recommend getting a second domain controller and have them replicating data just in case one dies, the other will then take the workload allowing users to log on etc.

 

Hope this helps.

[edutech4schools]

Do not forget you need to move the FSMO roles after promoting to DC.

 

install new OS

Join domain

Depending on OS version either DCPROMO or use server roles to promote the server to being a domain controller

transfer the FSMO roles

 

Something like that

[GC75]

Hi regarding transferring FSMO roles I found some good instructions here that should help you https://winsvr.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/transferring-fsmo-roles-from-ws-2008r2-dc-to-ws-2012-dc/.

 

Also I would recommend Robocopy (It was made available on the Windows 2003 Resource Kit Tools CD, if you don't have it to hand you can download a copy of it here Download Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools from Official Microsoft Download Center) for moving data across from one server to another it not only moves data but also permissions over to the folders, as well as this if for some reason the copy gets halted, you can run it again and it will pick up where it left off. As an example of a script you can run I tend to use something like this:

 

net use n: /delete

net use n: \\servername\sharename

robocopy n:\ d:\sharename *.* /S /E /COPYALL /R:5 /W:1 /LOG:d:\robocop\Sharename.log

 

This example starts by checking that no N drive is already mapped, if so it removes the mapping, then maps an N drive to the server and sharename you want to copy across, followed by the robocopy switches to copy the data, there is a log file it creates at the end of the third line that you can check if you have any problems with it.

 

I hope that makes sense and also that it helps with your goal of moving FSMO roles and data across to the new server.

[audiophile03]

Thanks everyone for your input!

I did promote the server to be a domain controller already. So, I guess I just need to go through transferring the FSMO roles to finish the changeover. So, if I were to change the current policy and profile settings that point the where the profile data is being stored, would it not copy whats stored on the profile to the new location on the new server or would I lose each users data? I am hoping not to have to copy it because it is so large...about 50 peoples worth of data. Plus, even logged in as the admin, I don't have access to each users data. I am assuming that the robocopy will bypass these permissions in order to copy and is the program command line based?

 

Cheers,

Jared

[GC75]

Jared,

 

I've always been told not to transfer the roles until sysvol has been shared out on the new domain controller, so if you open an command prompt on the new dc and type 'net share' enter check that you can see sysvol in the list, it can sometimes take a little while to take effect, but hopefully you should be able to see it. If it's there you can then carry on with changing over the FSMO roles. If you have profiles and a home folder for each user in Active Directory, I find a quick way of changing them on bulk especially if they are in the same OU is to select them all, right click, properties and under profile path put \\yourservername\yourprofileshare\%username% this will then change all of them in one go to the new servername and create a folder for each user in your profile share folder. You can also do the same if you have a home folder path, just choose the drive letter then \\yourservername\userdataarea\%username%. Believe me that can save plenty of work especially if like me you are in a school with over 700 users!

 

As for Robocopy it is a command line based application, though I tend to make a batch file and include all areas I want to copy data from like pupil data, pupil share, staff data, staff share etc. That way once you know it is setup correctly you can kick it off as you leave at the end of the day and it will all be transferred across over night, barring any problems anyway. I put in a new server in the summer and was able to come in the next day to find everything had transferred across successfully. I would advise to do it out of hours if you can as it could slow down your network and depending on how much data you have, can take hours to transfer. As for not having access to the user's areas, I cannot honestly answer that question for you as I have always made sure I use the built-in Administrator account that has full access to all areas.

[audiophile03]

Just checked to make sure that SYSVOL shows up and it does so I should be able to go. I downloaded and installed the Windows 2003 Resource Kit Tools and will use GC75's example to copy the RoamingProfiles folder this weekend. Thanks everyone for your help!