featured_spectre Posted March 28, 2010 Posted March 28, 2010 Does anyone know how to rename a DC and ADUC forest? The boss has decided that naming the server and pc's after the Simpsons charactors is too childish (despite her recommending we ask the children what to name it). As such I shall be renaming the server and ADUC forest but I am unsure how to do it safely without ruining the setup - and I would hate to have to reinstall everythig again! Any help would be much appreiated. Many thanks! Carl
garrya100 Posted March 28, 2010 Posted March 28, 2010 (edited) Renaming a DC is relatively painless, you need to demote it first, rename it and then re-promote it, however if you only have one DC than you may be better of building another DC with the correct name, promote it to a DC, wait for everything to replicate and then demoting and removing the old one I've just done all that moving over from 2003R2 to 2008R2 servers, I changed the names of the old 2003 servers so I could use the same names for the 2008 servers. The 2003 servers become olddc-1 etc till all was replicated and they were decommissioned. Removing a DC from a domain with only one DC is frought with danger, as is trying to rename a DC with out demoting it. Last time I tried that trick I totally wrecked the DNS, and spent way to much time fixing it. As for renaming your forest, I've never seen it done, and don't think its possible with building a new one. It may be do-able with some serious AD tools but I wouldn't like to try! If somebody knows how I'd like to know too! Edited March 28, 2010 by garrya100
SYNACK Posted March 28, 2010 Posted March 28, 2010 Strangely I am just prepping to do this myself, the tools that you are looking for are rendom.exe to rename the domain forest and XDR-Fixup for exchange 2003. It is not a small undertaking and you will want to do some serious planning beforehand. If you are running a later version of Exchange you will need to uninstall before performing the rename then reinstall and restore it. Other tools like Certificate services will also need to be removed and restored during the process. It requires a domain functional level of Server 2003 and at least two reboots of every computer. Here is some heavy reading: Jorge 's Quest For Knowledge! : Considering a domain rename? Server 2008 Domain Rename Active Directory Domain Rename - Not Difficult At All | 1 of 9 Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Domain Rename Tools Rename Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers The Lazy Admin : Domain Rename Part 3 - Exchange 2003 Domain Rename – Rename a Windows 2003 Forest with Exchange 2003 installed Exchange for Experts: Be The Master Of Your Domain Rename With Exchange How to rename exchange server (5th Response) - Toolbox for IT Groups Supplemental steps for using the Exchange Server Domain Rename Fixup tool together with the Windows Server 2003 domain rename tools http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=24b47d4a-c4b9-4031-b491-29839148a28c&displaylang=en
featured_spectre Posted March 28, 2010 Author Posted March 28, 2010 I'll just tell her that without redoing everythig from scratch it can't be done....it's taken us 6 months to get everything how we want it. Plus I could set up a proper staff gpo when I migrate the old admin and sims server over.
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