Personally, I'd go with your alternate option of performing a wipe and
load. That ensures you don't have any inefficiencies carried over from
the previous OS.
If
you copy the OS and HP Support Pack software onto a networked share, you
should be able to perform the installations without having anyone on site to
swap CDs. You would link to the share from the target server using its
RIB connection, run the setup program and select the new installation option
(it will copy the files it needs to the local drive). Once the OS is
installed, you would establish a link to the network share that contains the
HP Support Software and run it's setup program.
I've
performed this operation from the console of one of my local servers when
going from NT4 to 2000. We're not licensed to use 2K3 yet (will be next
year), so I don't have personal experience with 2000 to 2K3
(yet).
HTH.
Ken Adams
Has
anyone done an in-place upgrade from 2000 to 2003 on HP/Compaq
servers?
I am
trying to put together a plan for upgrading our forest, and one of the sticky
points is our remote domain controllers. What I would like to do is update
each DC to the latest 2k support pack, then do an in-place 2003 upgrade,
then grab the latest 2k3 support pack (I am assuming that the 2k and
2k3 versions of support pack are different).
I
will, of course, test in the lab, but as some great admiral once said: "The
best scale for an experiment is twelve inches to the foot". I'd like to hear
from someone who's done this in the real world.
My
other option is to demote the existing DC, rebuild from scratch, and promote.
I can do this fairly easy (all my remote DCs have RIB cards), but it will
require someone at each location to swap the smart start CD with the OS
cd.
