I've started in a business where there is one server & DC (IBM xseries 226) running AD, DNS, DHCP, WINS, File & Print Services. I discovered that it was bought second hand a few years ago, and has only 1GB ram! Also only 500MB free on primary partition. The network in our place is going down multiple times per week, group policies are being bypassed and there are multiple intermittent DNS/DHCP issues. I got the go-ahead to purchase a new server, which is arriving later today. Luckily, I work in a college which is taking halloween holidays, so there is nobody accessing the network til next monday, so i have a bit of time to play with.. I'm just looking for information as to the best route to take with this new server.. IE: Should I migrate all services, or use old server as, lets say, a file and print server? The new server is brand new, very high spec, and our college is relatively small (90-100 nodes, 120+ users) Some advice as to the best way to do this migration would be very helpful, as I said, I just started in this job 2 weeks ago, it's my first job since graduating, and it's my first time to install a new server. Bosey

I'm just looking for information as to the best route to take with this new server.. IE: Should I migrate all services, or use old server as, lets say, a file and print server? The new server is brand new, very high spec, and our college is relatively small (90-100 nodes, 120+ users) If it were me, I'd build the new server, make it a DC in the domain and transfer all FSMO roles and everything else off the old server onto the new one. I'd keep the old server as a redundant DC and possibly give it a role or two that don't require a lot of horsepower so as not to overtax the poor old thing....lol....something like what you mentioned, a file or print server. Now, I've been away from domain admin for a few years and I confess, my skills are rusting so I would do some research on MS's website before trying this as I can't give you more detailed info. At this point in time, I'd have to do a few hours of research myself before I'd attempt it. If you have time, you can lab the whole process out several times over (documenting each step carefully) until you're satisfied you can do it safely without any major losses of data or connectivity. Hopefully someone else less rusty than me can give you more detailed information.

Thanks very much for the reply. I'm just wondering how exactly does one transfer over roles? Is there any problems in migrating the AD from one machine to another? I'm afraid I've bitten off a lot more than i can chew, and no matter how much reading I do I can't seem to get a clear plan in my head! Bosey

CurtR is not as rusty as he thinks if at all :-) You are not migrating AD. You are adding to AD which is what Microsoft recommends eg. two AD DCs for authenication load balancing and AD failover. You set the new server's dns entries to point to the existing AD DC. You run dcpromo and join as a DC. In AD you enable both to hold the global catalog and transfer the fsmo roles. Just google transfer [not seize] the fsmo roles and how to enable the GC. This is very straight forward and you are not making any major changes except to add a DC. Piece of cake. Now if you are loading 2008 on the new server you will need to read up on ADPREP since you will need to update the schema to then enable 2008 to come in. Again its pretty straight forward.

OK, well I'm going to give that a go and read up some of those topics now (just installing OS as we speak), will post an update soon. Again, many thanks to you both for your help. Bosey

OK I've got the server on the network, assigned static IP and entered DNS address of current server.. I also ran through the roles and transfered all onto the new server EXCEPT the schema - as I got an error (parameter doesn't exist). It also gave me a warning that I should not transfer this role, and if I did, I would have to reformat the HDD and reinstall 2k3 on the old server.. Any ideas?? Next up is to transfer the DNS and DHCP roles, is this easy enough? Bosey

Did you let some time pass for replication to complete? Did you make the new server a global catalog holder? Don't move dhcp. It belongs on the weaker server. Don't move dns but bring up dns server on the new server as either secondary or AD intergrated [recommended]. This again is for failover which is why you want dns server running on both. Concerning the error, can you post it specifically?