For those of you with NT4 and Win2k Server Experience...

[goob2k]

This is for a class of mine, so here's what I got to do.

I need to decide the best course of action in taking two NT4 servers (one is an Exchange 5.5 server and the other is the company's domain controller) and installing Windows 2000 Server without losing any data (this company is an architect firm, so lost data means lost $$). The Exchange server will also need to be updated to Exchange 2000.

So server goons, what should I do?

 

[Woodie]

I'll warn you now....this is a very significant upgrade. Throwing in an Exchange upgrade will make this a nightmare. (Well, I guess I shouldn't say that it "will be", just that it "probably" will be.)

I would break it out into a bumch of smaller tasks if you could. Something like:

1. Upgrade DC to W2K (mixed mode)
2. Upgrade Exchange server to W2K
3. Upgrade Exchange to W2K

If you can, leave plenty of time between steps for fall-back and/or trouble-shooting. Also leave time in case you have to do a fall-forward!

--Woodie

 

[goob2k]

How big of a significant upgrade would this be?

And I suppose it would be smarter to upgrade instead of a clean install, as that will keep settings and such.

 

[MulLa]

I am not a guru but, yer it's better to upgrade in your situation and besides it's a class so it would be a requirement to upgrade. Oh and just to add to Woodie's steps. Exchange 2000 must be installed on a W2k server with SP1 and up.

 

[Woodie]

Significant?

1. OS -- from the server perspective, W2K is really NT5, with Directory awareness.
2. Domain -- from the domain perspective, W2K is a completely different animal. It has an LDAP directory for authentication, it's based on TCP/IP through-out (won't run w/o it), and the Windows Domain now maps directly to the IP domain.
3. Exchange w/ AD: This embeds the Exchange information into the AD...it requires custom schema extensions to the AD, and the whole mail, authentication, address book, is all tied into the AD. If the domain crashes, Exchange is dead. If Exchange crashes...what happens to the AD? (I don't know the answer to that either) What happens if Exchange has a bug, and starts to corrupt entries in the directory? Uh=oh---that directory is the same one all my users use to login....

BTW, our Exchange implementation has been going on for > 12 months, and now has twice as many people working on it, as compared to the original staffing estimates. Oh, it's still not implemented yet...maybe next year.

--Woodie