Starting a fresh forest / domain

[PrimaryTech]

I'm due a physical server upgrade soon and will be looking to convert my 3 existing physical servers into VM's.

 

I've been running the domain for nearly 12 years now (Server 2000 - 2008 R2) and I was wondering if anyone has ever ditched a domain and started a fresh one from scratch?

 

Our DC migrations have always been a PITA and it feels like each time I do a migration, despite doing dcdiags, I get more and more problems and I'm wondering if a new server would be a good opportunity to start with a fresh domain.

[McChikenhanger]

Depends on how much time you would have for redoing all of your group policies and any other settings that you may have on your network. Also if you have other systems that piggy back from accounts on AD you would have to troubleshoot those as they will stop working once the old domain ceases to exist, i.e. SIMS server, door system, etc. Doing a P2V would definitely be a lot quicker, plus also look at putting the new Virtual Environment in a cluster or HA configuration if possible for added reliability.

[NB9457]

How are you upgrading your DC? In place upgrade is not recommended, whereas adding a secondary DC, then transferring roles to this is the cleanest and easiest way and should give no grief. Should never really be a need to start again.

[TechMonkey]

Yes, I've done it twice at different places. The first was moving from an RM network to go Vanilla, the second is more similar to what you are thinking of, creating a new forest because the current is untrusted or has unusual errors. The backstory was that some of the servers had been P2Vd quite quickly due to issues with hardware and there had been other issues in the past. The networks of an unknown providence so I made the decision to start again. I did have an MSP to help out, and they set up a system to transfer users from one forest to another and, if I remember correctly, the ability to keep passwords and user areas. But if it is such a massive change anyway it may be worth just creating new users, copy user areas manually and mapping as part of the user profile, and sorting out a default password for staff to log in to the first time. In the first transfer I did something like a member of staff's postcode and road name.

[ITGURU]

Yes done it before. Due to a school merger i had to merge 2 AD networks in 1 new one. went very smooth with minimal downtime. as long as you have a trust in place between the 2 domains it wont matter which domain your server/clients are members of, you will be able to access resources.

it can be a big job when exchange is involved but I managed to do a complete migration in the summer holidays!

all users logins remained the same

[PrimaryTech]

Cheers guys, I think I probably need to spend more time digging out issues rather than starting again. Thanks for the responses!

[MatthewL]

If the domain is ok how you want it, i.e. all policies setup, structure then it might pay to fix some of the issues, unless you really want a few domain?