Active Directory - Upgrade or Migrate ???

[Neil_S2]

Hello

I know that a similar post was put up last week, but can I canvass opinions specifically on the pro's and con's of upgrading or migrating in parallel from NT4 to 2000 AD.

My situation at work is basically that we are at the mercy of our US peers, who feel that upgrading is the way forward (mainly because this is what they did on their week-long AD course !) whereas we in the UK prefer the migration route.

Has anyone done either, and if so what happened ????

Thanks

Neil

[apeebles]

I can't really suggest anything cause you will probably be b**gered by your US peers!

Seriously though are all your NT servers working on seperate domains worldwide or are you on a single NT domain. What kind of structure are you hoping to move to worldwide with W2K. If you are networking then I would imagine that the US are going to get heavily involved in this project as I suspect you will have a single forest. This will probably mean the enterprise adminstrators will reside in the US and they will control the rollout of the project. Sorry to be a pain but you need to provide a lot of info as there is no straightforward answer. BTW I would never upgrade. Migration is the best way forward as upgrades usually carry all the crap over with them

Good luck!

>> Edited by apeebles on Tuesday 22 July 10:33

[Neil_S2]

We are currently a single NT4 domain, and will go to a single domain/forest AD model - this is one of the few things that has been agreed on.

The administration post-change will be shared between the UK and US (as part of a 'follow-the-sun' style support model) so that shouldn't get too messy, although all FSMO roles etc will be based in the US.

[Podie]

Migrate... you can monitor progress. If the NT is a separate domain, there is no reason why you can't do site by site, and have 2000 talking to NT across domains...

[danielson]

Hi Neil, as you are running single domain it might be worthwhile starting from scratch. Any opportunity to do a clean start with Microsoft is best IMO. If though you have a good structured SAM database already then migrations do work and you can always tidy up once done. I guess it depends on your client base you have to support and your timescale. We are looking to do a similar thing here with a single domain and im opting to do a fresh start plan but thats just me. Just plan for the worst and have a good backup and offline BDC kicking about just in case :-)

[davidd]

If you hae the time and available infrastructure then build a parallel system and migrate.

D.

[Neil_S2]

Thanks for the thoughts so far.

To date I've not been able to find anyone that went for the upgrade option rather than the migration option.