CC4 Migration

[Bob_the_Goon]

Hello,

 

I was just wondering if anyone has any experience of migrating away from CC4 to vanilla? Ideally what we would like to do is keep the existing domain, but to introduce Server 2012 DCs into it. We could then migrate users and computers away from the current CC4 GPOs.

 

Has anyone approached their migration in this way?

 

My main concern is that by introducing a Wk2012R2 DC into AD, the schema changes would break CC4. Our current domain is running at a 2003 domain functional level.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Paul

[Michael]

It's a good question - the Domain/Forest functional levels need to be 2003 or later to support a 2012 R2 DC. As to whether upgrading the schema will break CC4, who knows... only RM can answer this, but then again, there must be RM Admins on here who have 2008/2008 R2 at the very least surely?

 

Again the Domain/Forest functional levels are 2003, but the Schema would be 47 instead of 2003 R2's 31. 2012 R2 would bring it up to version 69.

[Bob_the_Goon]

Thank you Michael.

 

Unfortunately RM won't advise me with this as a migration away from CC4 to vanilla is outside of my support contract with them. They said that we would need to pay for them to carry out the migration. I don't have the available budget to do this.

[Michael]

I suppose your choices are either -

 

- Find a CC4 school who are running 2012 R2 (if it exists)

- Build a new domain, then create a trust to migrate data

 

By logic this shouldn't break CC4, you can still run everything off the same subnet, but take this information 'as is' as I am only speculating it would work.

 

Maybe it should be considered a job for the Summer holidays, as you'll need to re-build all your workstations one by one anyway. Your server is only part of the problem.

[andy_white]

We built a whole new infrastructure and transferred the data but before we did this RM said it was possible to add a new DC without CC4 and the demote the CC4 DCs.

https://www.rm.com/support/technicalarticle.asp?cref=tec1713624

[Bob_the_Goon]

Thank you Andy. So did you go down the CC4 Matrix route as set out in your tec article?

[andy_white]

Thank you Andy. So did you go down the CC4 Matrix route as set out in your tec article?

 

No, we built a new infrastructure and transferred the data, we decided just to bin CC4 altogether. The biggest job was re-imaging all the clients.

[Bob_the_Goon]

Gotcha. So did you keep the same domain and then just transfer data etc to new servers within it? If so, what was your domain level before and after migrating?

[andy_white]

No just started afresh - new local domain name, all servers 2012R2, all users had new user accounts so robocopied their home drives and shared areas, etc. No trusts between new and old systems.

[halbaradkenafin]

Same here, we built a new domain and created a trust between them before migrating users (due to O365 integration). We were 2003 before migrating so had to stand up a 2008 DC to migrate to first and then to 2012 from there as 2003 to 2012 isn't supported apparently.

[Boredguy]

To be honest, I would go for a fresh domain and rebuild stations across to it once you have setup new policies that way you can move away from roaming profiles and not have any remnant of RM policies kicking around in the domain.