We're combining 7 business units together into a new Server 2003 forest. We'll have an empty root and the 7 BUs will be combined into an AMER domain. Some BUs already have AD with Server 2000 and others still have NT4.0. All BUs are running WINS and we believe that we'll still need WINS. However, 7 WINS environments are not the way we want to continue and there are way too many WINS servers around right now. Setting up push/pull replication between them doesn't seem to make sense either. We wish to reduce the number of WINS servers to just our 8 major datacenters (each are hubs in our current WAN -- we hope to get that fixed but not soon enough).
Question is this... Do we build one WINS server using Server 2003 in each of the datacenters and either specify automatic partner configuration or replication partners based on the WAN, shut down the old WINS servers on a Friday night, reconfigure all servers and workstations to new WINS addresses (scripted), and pray that all's well by Monday? Or do we work to reduce the number of WINS servers in each of the BUs, upgrade them to 2003, and set up replication, thus preserving our current entries? I know that I may not be giving you much information. Can and will provide more if you need. Thanks, Mike List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
