Changing the internal domain name

[SpuffMonkey]

Hi - as part of the "transition" to being an academy - we are tasked with changing the internal domain of our system to reflect the new name of the school (ie from oldschool.local to newshinyacademy.local)

 

We are 2003, Exchange 2003, XP clients with Citrix thrown in for good measure.

 

Have any of you done this in the past? If so - how painful was it? I imagine getting the name changed is tricky - but its all the software that runs on top that worries me.

 

Any good news or gotchas gratefully received

[p858snake]

AFAIK you need to completely rebuild the AD controller to redo the forest name.

[jamesreedersmith]

Yes - you will really need to rebuld the domain from the dc up im afraid. Major major headache. Also worth not using .local as if you have or plan on getting any macs you will find you get glitches and problems due to it - better to use the latest advice from M$ and use .int (internal domain)

 

Cheers

 

James

[mavhc]

.int is international .int - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[plexer]

Active Directory Domain Rename - Not Difficult At All | 1 of 10

 

Any help?

[bio]

We did this 2 years ago. Windows 2003, win xp clients, exchange 2003. We had no hassle at all. We used these 2 documents:

 

http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCsQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2Fc%2Ff%2Fc%2Fcfcbff04-97ca-4fca-9e8c-3a9c90a2a2e2%2FDomain-Rename-Procedure.doc&rct=j&q=rename+domain+whitepaper&ei=1I4pTPD6JsLqOM_h5bID&usg=AFQjCNHqivmbtV2Gk5IsEEqfXiF6whqagg

Domain Rename – Rename a Windows 2003 Forest with Exchange 2003 installed

 

good luck

 

bio..

[SpuffMonkey]

We did this 2 years ago. Windows 2003, win xp clients, exchange 2003. We had no hassle at all. We used these 2 documents:

 

Thanks - how did it go with the software you had installed - like most schools - we've an absolute ton of disparate software running across many servers - did most of yours need reinstalling or could it cope with the transition of domain name?

[mavhc]

Once when our main DC died and the backups didn't work, we tried moving computers to a new domain, but the profiles didn't work for some reason.

 

Also anything you installed via GPO will be looking in the wrong place I suspect, best to do the uninstall when taken out of scope thing.

Edited June 29, 2010 by mavhc