Hi- I'm not entirely certain I understand the question, but, some general thoughts around your message:
You are correct your proposed methodology this is the easiest method. You will also need to run adprep /domainprep followed by adprep /domainprep /gpprep for each domain you plan to upgrade. You do not need to upgrade to Windows 2000 native mode first. WS03 can be dcpromo'ed into a mixed mode domain. As a matter of principle, you should really aim to goto FFL2/DFL2 (WS2003 functional level) as part of this exercise. You can dcpromo 2003 domain controllers into either domain. To upgrade your forest of course you need to upgrade the DCs in each domain. WS2003 maintains the one domain per domain controller relationship. Once you go to Windows 2003, you will be able to leverage application partitions to replicate your DNS zones around which will remove the need for these hierarchical forwarders, potentially. Why are you going to WS03? It's now two releases behind. Thanks, Brian Desmond [email protected] c - 312.731.3132 -----Original Message----- From: Michael Leone [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 8:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Upgrading a parent/child domain I have an odd question. We are trying to practice upgrading our Win2000 parent/child domain to Win2003. As such, I have recreated this configuration in a VMware ESX cluster. (I made copies of a DC for both the parent and child, and seized all roles, and cleaned out the metadata for all the missing DCs). That seemed to go well. So my boss turned the next phase of the project - actually DCpromoing a Win2003 server in each domain - to a co-worker. 1. That is the easiest method to go from Win200 to Win2003, AFAIK. Make a Win2003 a member server, and then DCpromo it- will upgrade your domain level to 2003. (after adprep /forestprep, adprep /schemaprep, of course) He reports that he had to first set the Win2000 domain into native mode, and not the mixed mode we run in production. I wouldn't have thought that to be needed. Does that sound right? I think we should be able to go to native mode on production, as we have no old NT/Win9.x clients). 2. We have to DCpromo a Win2003 server in *each domain*, the parent and the child, correct? I can't imagine that it only needs to be done on the parent. I did have him verify that the child domain DNS has all the proper entries for it's reverse zone, and that it is set to forward to the parent DNS server. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
