Moving from 2003 to 2008

[fred54]

I am moving from Server 2003 to 2008 Std, after the usual backups etc I have jumped in at the deep end and installed 2008 on 2 servers but I want to promote them to DCs. My understanding is that I will have to update the 2003 AD and domain to 2008 before I can do this. I would liked to have done the upgrade in stages, updating the lesser servers to 2008 and ensuring they function OK before upgrading my master controller to 2008. Can I promote the 2008 servers to DCs without upgrading the master controller and use a mixture of 2003 and 2008 DCs? Alternatively if I upgrade the domain and AD to 2008 will the 2003 DC work OK? I am not confident about setting up the domain and AD from scratch if I have to do a fresh install of 2008 on my master controller. Any tips on strategies for moving from 03 to 08 would be greatly appreciated.

[teejay]

See this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-server-2008-r2/59483-first-2008-r2-dc-2003-r2-domain.html

[frosty]

Had an issue with printers! After the upgrade it deleted all the printers thus upsetting PCounter!

[fred54]

Thanks for the tips so far - I am using Pcounter so thats good to know. Adprep is telling me that I must operate in Native mode. If I switch to Native mode can I change back to Mixed mode if I need to?

[CraigM]

Thanks for the tips so far - I am using Pcounter so thats good to know. Adprep is telling me that I must operate in Native mode. If I switch to Native mode can I change back to Mixed mode if I need to?

 

Don't quote me on this, but as far as I know, schema changes are a one way permanent change with no going back afterwards. However, if I recall correctly, 2003 DC's can live in a 2008 environment with the correct settings. You do lose some of the new features 2008 brings to the table though.

[KK20]

its a one way street. We have 1 2003 DC remaining in our 2008 domain (2003 mode). The remaining 2003 DC is our exchange server and that is going the way of the dodo at christmas. I had absolutely no issues moving our "pdc" (yes I know they dont exist but in my head this is our PDC ). Transferred all the roles the 2003 server without issue. I had no issues with GPOs although I moved a lot of "installation" GPOs so they needed to be changed to reflect the new paths.

 

If you are moving user account data across then I cannot understate the value of this utility ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/pss/tools/Exchange%20Support%20Tools/ADModify/ it was shear magic in changing all the locations of profiles in one hit. Robocopy is also your friend. I decided to reshare manually as I "pruned" at the same time.

[3s-gtech]

ADModify rocks my socks, and several other parts of me. Anyone with a Windows Server domain should have it.

[fred54]

So far so good - all but one server up to 2008 and promoted to DCs without any problems! I will take a day or two now to tidy up and do more testing on the upgraded servers before doing the last one. Thanks to all who posted!