Temporarily running two sbs 2003 boxes on same network... possible?
This is a variation of a question I've seen answered. Need an answer on this particular situation...
Recently disconnected an SBS 2003 server, domain: domain1.local. Connected a new SBS Server 2003, domain: domain2.local. Unjoined everyone from old domain, now everyone connected to new domain.
Need to connect the old SBS box temporaily to pull a large shared folder over to the new server. Can I just turn off the DHCP server on the old box, and then plug the old servver into the network switch? (The old and new servers have different static IPs.)
Thanks.
Dave
Recently disconnected an SBS 2003 server, domain: domain1.local. Connected a new SBS Server 2003, domain: domain2.local. Unjoined everyone from old domain, now everyone connected to new domain.
Need to connect the old SBS box temporaily to pull a large shared folder over to the new server. Can I just turn off the DHCP server on the old box, and then plug the old servver into the network switch? (The old and new servers have different static IPs.)
Thanks.
Dave
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The reason SBS doesn't like two SBS servers on the network is that SBS MUST be the FSMO master DC for the domain. Since you cannot have two FSMO master DCs for a domain, you cannot have TWO SBS servers on a domain. SBS 2003 DOES provide an up to 3 week grace period for migration where it can lose the FSMO roles while another SBS server holds them. Then it starts shutting itself down every few hours. So even if the grace period AND the SBS servers were in the same domain were expired, it would still work so long as you could finish the copy in under an hour (2 or more hours if you're lucky).
In your case, you have two different domains, so there's no problem - each SBS server can be the FSMO master for its own domain. You cannot create trusts, but you can authenticate as if they were workgroups. The only problem - as you rightly observed - is DHCP - SBS shuts DHCP down if it detects another, so you would be best off booting the system OFF network, disabling DHCP, and then connecting it to the network (you likely wouldn't have to reboot).