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Hi Everyone, I am looking to migrate our schools DNS and DHCP over the summer holidays - I did think about hosting these on their firewall, but I would like access if needed. I am looking at purchasing a Micro computer/server to host these services on, maybe something like this - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-Optiplex-Desktop-Computer-D10U001/dp/B08SMSFV7R/ref=sr_1_3?crid=31HTKAIGS3BV6&keywords=dell+micro+pc&qid=1688402474&sprefix=dell+micro+pc%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-3 Can anyone see any downsides to this? It will only be used for these two services, and nothing else. TIA.

Hi, Has anyone had experience migrating all staff emails away from LGfL to another provider, in particular Office 365? My experience is that LGfL will not allow us to do a bulk IMAP migration and the only suggestion is doing a manual move of each mailbox in Outlook. Any advice anyone has to help would be very welcome! Thanks in advance James

well...technically its the same physical server, but we want to rebuild it with 2008, the machine runs sql server 2005 on which there is a database called SOPHOS, how do I go about backing up all the data and then reinstating it on the new server? Thanks

Dear all, I currently maintain a CC3 network at a secondary school, however we are in the process of planning the move to a standard Vanilla network. Could anyone lend any advice or tips on the following: - * Whats the best way to move the students work/profiles? * Is there a way of beginning this network change if we use a different subnet mask and IP range? What is the best way of getting our new servers up and running without them conflicting with our current DCs? * Should DNS/DHCP be installed on all of the new servers or just the Forrest Root (4 servers in total) * Is there a 'proper' way to set up IP addresses and Subnets or can we be quite free with what we choose? Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks.

Greetings, We are looking at migrating to 2008 Server this summer in order to run Windows 7 with full functionality. Its the first time i have personally done something like this and I need some advice please. I have 2 x 2003 server standard domain controllers, call them DC01 & DC02 It seems that all the FSMO roles are on DC01. DNS is installed on both servers while DHCP is installed on DC01. I want to keep DC01 as the main domain controller as its the higher spec server of the two. My main questions are.. 1. Is Server 2003 upgradeable to 2008 or will it need a re-install. 2. Assuming it is upgradeable it is possible to do it in-situ without having to move roles, demote, remove, upgrade, promote. Are there any pit falls and what is the procedure for a process like this? 3. If it isnt possible to upgrade and a reinstall is in order, whats the procedure for moving roles, demoting and re promoting. Will i still keep policies and all the other settings we currently have. 4. Is it possible to have a back up of the server in case this goes horribly wrong? Many thanks for any help you can give! James

Hi all. We've recently moved over to Office 365 from Google Apps. During the process we using the built-in O365 migration tool to batch-migrate all staff emails over to the new system. In O365 we have changed email addresses to [email protected] - previously they were a bit random and didn't follow any format. Now when a user attempts to send an email to someone, their old email address is the one shown in the autofill To: field, so when staff are emailing they are clicking on that one, which is the incorrect email. Obviously then emails are all bouncing back because the old address no longer exists in the new system. Is there ANY way at all to get rid of these addresses. We've tried clearing the auto-complete list but the addresses are still showing. Cheers. Nick

Hi, Having problems with migrating WinXP to Win7 on SCCM using hardlinking. I’ve setup a TS using this blog: How to use USMT 4 hardlinking in a Configuration Manager 2007 Task Sequence - The Configuration Manager Support Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs In the Capture User Files and Settings I have a TS variable: Set USMT Additional Capture Options OSDMigrateAdditionalCaptureOptions /nocompress /hardlink But problem occurs when it encounters a computer with local profiles, as it can’t restore them so it stops the entire restore process and doesn’t even restore the domain profiles. So after reading some blogs I’ve changed that variable to: /nocompress /hardlink /ue:%computername%\* As that is meant to not include any local profiles. Unfortunately this isn’t working either. Could anyone share with me how they have done this step to exclude local profiles from being captured please? Thanks, Rob

Good morning Hive Mind, I'm looking at setting up a server in Azure that will handle Entra Connect, but wanted some advice from anyone that's done this previously. Here's the scenario: - We have an on-prem AD that currently syncs to a 365 tenancy - We will be doing a tenant-to-tenant migration in the near future, so the environment will change - Entra Connect for the on-prem AD is then going to have to point to the new tenant, however... - This isn't the only tenant-to-tenant migration that will happen to this destination, and we don't want the Entra Connect server to be placed on-prem at any one location. We'd rather have it in the cloud on the destination tenant so future on-prem environments can also point to it I'm ready to set up the Azure server, but I wanted to know if anyone had done something similar before I hit 'Create' in case there's anything in particular I need to watch out for. Advice is welcome, thank you in advance!

HI all, I've recently got a new server to replace our aging domain controller and I've been going through the process detailed here: Step By Step Guide for Migrating Windows 2000 server to Windows 2003 Server | Windows Reference So far I've done 3 of the 4 steps: New server is on the domain and holds all 5 FSMO roles plus the GC role, I've migrated all shares and transferred and authorised DHCP. Did all the checks with DCDIAG's, all fine. Before demoting the old (Server 2000) server I thought I'd see if a client could log on with the old server removed from the network (took the network cable out of the server). The client connected to the domain but was ssssllllooooooowwww, around 8-10 mins to log on. I researched the problem and found that the clients have the old server's IP address as the DNS server If I demote the old server to a member server and remove it from the domain, give the new server the same name and IP address as the old server as described here (Disconnect the old server (win server 2000),Raise the domain level functionality to native Windows 2003,Rename your new windows server 2003(Part4) | Windows Reference) Will this cure my really slow logons? Sorry it's a long post, any help/guidance is gratefully received!

I am not sure if this is the right place to post this sort of question, but I'm going to jump in anyway! We currently have a CC3 network running RM Easymail 2 server and are having the network recommissioned onto new hardware over the summer. One of the primary differences will be that we're migrating to Exchange server. The problem is the migration. RM have provisionally said they can do the bulk of the commissioning etc... w/b 21st July; but they can't do Exchange until Aug 12th. My question is: what's the best solution for receiving mail between the 21st of July and the 12th of August? I don't particularly want to install Easymail again for the sake of a few days - nor do I want the hassle of mailbox migration etc...

Hi all, I made a post a few weeks back about migrating schools to 100% Google and had some very good feedback... Since then, I have acquired a new job as ICT Network Manager at a very small MAT (2 schools). One school has around 500 students, and the other only has about 120. Both schools are VERY into Google with students and some staff using Chromebooks and using Google Drive etc. The larger primary school has one physical host running Hyper-V with two virtual machines. While the smaller schools server died a while ago, (and the current network manager didn't think it was worth replacing due to the amount they use Google Services). I will be looking to introduce GCPW over the summer for the remaining windows devices, to authenticate users without AD, and I will be managing these devices in something like Action1 rmm. Staff will be able to upload their remaining documents to Google via the drive client, and I will move any on-prem file shares into Google shared drives and reshare them out. The Chromebooks will obviously be managed through the admin console, so no issues there. They both use Arbor so SIMS doesn't need to be hosted anywhere. Our ISP can also host DNS/DHCP on the firewall. I am trying to work out any hidden costs this migration will cost for each school... Not sure if anyone can advise? So far the only immediate costs will be running Papercut mobility print on a desktop £150-£200? and backing up staff folders/shared drives in Google workspace, Cubebackup for example £2 per user a year. I am sure I will be missing some kind of cost out somewhere! TIA

Good Morning All, Just wondered if anyone here has migrated away from DBPrimary mail (for staff) to Office 365 and if you have how did you do it? We are having non-stop issues with emails not arriving and their support hasn't been able to advise us on anything as of yet. I am looking at the IMAP migration tool in Office 365 but I don't even have a copy of their IMAP server details. Kind Regards Daniel

Good afternoon, I have been a long term watching in the forums and seen that a lot of schools are starting to move to onedrive for homedrives and sharepoint for network drives, Just a few questions : I would be mapping the shared network drive using the ondrive GPO - how does this work with MFA? How have people got round the 256 character limit, as teachers love having subfolders, was it just a culture change? Finally, how do you manage student logins, as adding the sharepoint using the gpo can take anywhere from 5mins to 8hours. Thanks and regards

Good afternoon! The College has decided to move away from CC4 to a vanilla network for reasons I won't go into here. What we haven’t decided on yet is how to achieve this. There are two methods we have discussed. Method 1 My preferred option is to build a clean network in the background, on virtual servers on it’s own VLAN, and test heavily in the isolated environment, with help and input from the users. When the network is good and ready, during the summer holiday, turn the CC4 network off and move the vanilla network onto the main infrastructure. Based on the CC4- CC4.3 migration that happened here, this would involve 1 week of complete downtime, 1 week of limited data whilst I restore it to the new domain, and from then on computers would need to be rebuilt, so staff would be restricted to where in the school they could work (not a massive issue in the summer holidays.) There is a lot of work involved with this route, but on the whole the clean break from the upgraded CC4 network to the CC4.3 network has paid off massively, in that I am no longer fighting issues each week caused by the upgrade, some of them which were very long and drawn out. I am very keen to avoid fighting unknown issues for the next x amount of years. Method 2 My colleague's preferred method is to create new OU’s in Active Directory, as much of the RM network group policy is contained in the establishments OU. In the new OU’s, our own group policies can be set up and configured, and computer and user objects instead moved to there. The network in theory could be gradually migrated across, moving users/ computers into the OU’s a few at a time. Also, there would be no issues with moving data or NTFS permissions (see below!) as all the groups SID’s will stay the same. When we did the CC4> CC4.3 migration (which used method 1), the first 2 months of term were disruptive, and my colleague seems determined to avoid this at all costs. While I want as little disruption for the College as possible, I would rather see 2 months of teething issues than years of hidden faults that will be a nightmare to resolve. Those 2 months of disruption are nothing compared to the 3 years that followed our initial CC4 install. The two big issues with the migration were self inflicted- we went from about 30 Windows 7 stations to the whole site as Windows 7, yet no-one had tested all of the remaining software for Windows 7 compatibility. I had also put 'check remaining NTFS permissions' on the gant chart I created and assigned the task to someone else, but this wasn't carried out properly, so when the users came back there were quite a few issues accessing shares. We have learnt from this and it wouldn't happen again. I feel the second method of a gradual migration will cause issues further down the line, and lingering RM components still on the network could cause issues and making solving what would normally be a simple Windows network problem more difficult. However, I can’t give technical details of what these issues might be. I have some incline as to what could go wrong, but as I don’t know in as much detail as RM how CC4 works, and I only have 5 years networking experience under my belt. I feel I’m not best placed to answer these questions. There’s also things I could’ve missed out. I would greatly appreciate the community's opinion on what could go wrong using the second method to move away from CC4 -or even if they think it would work well and I'm coming from it the wrong way Some of my inclines as to what could cause issues include: • Settings that could still be in the Default Domain Policy, which is outside the Establishments OU • Changes RM have made to the active directory schema • The CC4 build process interfering with WDS • Does CC4 write anything into the user profiles that would be undesirable to carry forward onto a vanilla network (e.g: custom RM reg settings in the NTUSER.pol files?) • RM software components still running on the servers after we move the computers and users out of the OU’s (e.g: the RM database) • What changes have RM made to the registry on the servers? Given how service host issues have caused issues with basic Windows features in the past (e.g; logons) • What happens if we move users into the new OU’s and they roam between computers still on CC4 (where settings are applied by custom ADM templates that control the RM software) and non-CC4 stations? • How well will we be supported in this configuration? From our meeting with some RM guys, it seems that this has not been attempted before, it has always been a clean migration The above list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, it’s just some thoughts that came to mind. I am really interested to know what you guys think that I've missed out/ am struggling to explain Many thanks, Dan

Hello! We've got a new server running Server 2008 R2. Our old server, currently in operation, is running 2003. Is it possible to just blitz everything over onto the new one? Group policies, usernames etc...? I was thinking if i tidy up the current one it would be simple just to send everything over to the new server. Is this possible???

Hi everyone, Hope you all are doing good, I have been tasked to do the following : Migrate our current child domain to root domain, remove child domain completely, a few questions I have are as follows : We have 2 x 2008R2 DCs, both of which also acts as file server (Yes - I have inherrited this just recently:-) ) Goal : To Migrate and consolidate our Child Domain by Migrating Users, Groups, OUs, to ROOT Domain in Same Forest. To Have our FileServers on the Current Hardware and Remove DC's off it I am thinking that I would have to do the following : a) Get a New Server Hardware, Install 2K8R2, DCPROMO to the ROOT Domain (Connected via VPN to ROOT Site) b) Install ADMT with SQL Express on Newly Created DC c) Start Migrating Users, Groups, Computer accounts, OUs to the parent / root domain in same forest How would I demote the 2 x dcs while ensuring there file-structure and permissions are in-tact on the same hardware or do I have to purchase fileserver hardware too for migration ? Will be grateful if someone could provide a step by step as to how to go about this migration. Thanks so much !! Regards Rihatum

Hi, have moved SIMS and FMS databases onto a new server OK, but am now wondering what the correct process for moving a DISCOVER database is. Have tried to attach the database using dbattach, but it just complains the ldf log file is missing, presumably because the file name is discover_log.ldf and not discover.ldf? Renaming and trying again produces a different error. I have tried to transfer data into a new DB, as if it was a fresh install, but at the moment the Discover Configurator is sat at waiting for service to respond. I am not sure if this is a separate issue or if something in the SIMS database from the old server already references a discover database and that's halting it. What's the correct procedure here?

We have had a bright idea to replace our current mail Server (First Class) with an Exchange server for all our Staff and Pupils (1500 users) Just wondering what experiences people have had with a completely fresh exchange setup and if anyone has any Hint and Tips for the first time admin. Also, if any one can recommend any training courses for exchange, we'd love to hear it. Ta.