migrating windows printer shares and file shares

I didn't see your add-in.  My printers are registered in AD and I do not get duplicates when I do restores on additional nodes I add.  Of course, all my printers are IP printers and you may not be setup like I am so I can't say for sure what would happen within your structure.

That printer Migrater sounds excellent. It reminds me of a folder share migrater I used in the past, now that I think of it. That could answer my other question.

I have heard of DFS replication but never touched it. Do you mean to tell me I could have two servers with essentially the same files shared for redundancy? I may not be throwing away this old server if that is something that works well.

PS - Just to add a caveat about demoting/promoting and changing server names.  When you demote Server A BE SURE to allow enough time for replication of that demotion throughout your domain/forest before you go on to the next step of changing the server name.  

@hypercat

Thanks, that actually makes sense. I do have a second DC, so I think my original plan will work then. So for printers, if I remove the old ones in R2's print mgt 5 mintues before I add the new ones vis R2's print mgt, I should be OK?

It would take more than 5 minutes for group policy to update all of your workstations, most likely, unless you edit the group policy update interval in group policy - User Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Group Policy/Group policy refresh interval for users. The default is 90 minutes.

Another better to do it, if possible, would be to make the changes at a time, if there is one, when all or most of your users are logged off or have their workstations shut down.  That way, when the workstations are brought back up and the users log on, the group policies will immediately be refreshed.

Well, if it were not at night I would be worried. But since everybody will be gone, I'm hoping the GPO will update everybody first thing when they log in. So in that case, I wonder how the delete/add would work especially since the names are the same. If the GPO and client PC only cares about the name and not a server's SID or something, it would almost seem like I could just not even delete the printers, but just do all the renaming on the servers and it would work.

Also make sure your 2nd DC has global catalog enabled and completely replicated.  Also make sure your FSMO roles are not on the decommissioned DC

On DFS yes, I have shares on several servers, mostly at remote location servers, that stay synched constantly through namespaces and dfs replication.  If my main file server goes down, within about 3 minutes their network drives are redirected to a server that is up and has up-to-date information.  i.e. I have a 3 GB share that several offices in different states access.  They all map to the same namespace so login scripts are essentially the same.  They all connect to different physical shares on different servers but are using replicated data so remote users do not access our corporate servers across cisco vpn's unless their local share goes unavailable.  At that point they are automatically redirected to our corporate servers and continue working as if nothing happened, does NOT require a logoff and logon to implement since they are still using the same namespace mapping.

Of course with all things, there are some possible down-sides to my last post.

Good point, Jeff.

@caix

Yes, if you're doing it at night, you probably don't need to do anything about the GPO update interval - the GPO's will automatically be applied when users come in and log on in the morning.  If anyone's not logged off, it will probably refresh overnight before they get in in the morning, too.

As far as the GPO, it might work not to delete the printers, but it might not, too.  I've never done this exact procedure, so I'm not sure. The computer account will have a new SID, since the original computer name was different, so my guess would be that the Print Management component will see it as a different server.  What you could do, since you're doing this on off-hours, is to do the whole procedure up through server name changing step, then test from a few workstations and see if it works. If it does, you can go home early.  If it doesn't, you proceed with the last step of removing and re-adding the printers through the Print Management console.

@Jeff
I will do some homework on that. At a glance it sounds like I may need server 2008 everywhere, which I wasn't prepared to do yet. Sounds nice once you ahve it all up tho.

@hypercat
Testing on a few workstations sounds like it'd be worth it.

@both of you

Excellent feed back. Thanks a ton!

On Global Catalog, Open AD Sites and Services, find your second active server and click the "+" and you will see "NTDS Settings".  Right-click on the "NTDS Settings" and go into Properties.  On the "General" tab you will see the Checkbox beside Global Catalog.  Make sure it is checked on your second DC that will stay active.

http://www.petri.co.il/determining_fsmo_role_holders.htm

will shed some light on FSMO role transfers and determining what DC holds them now.