Migrate users from Windows 2000 Advanced Server to Windows Server 2003 Standard without using a domain.
I have a live server running Windows 2000 Advanced Server. There are four similar servers in the school district for which I work. Their main purpose is to serve websites for each school using IIS 5 and FrontPage Server Extensions 2000. Our users never log into the server except for using web services (i.e. editing websites in FrontPage or accessing our help desk website). The school district wants to upgrade our servers to Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.
We do not want to run an upgrade installation on our server. Part of the reason for moving to Server 2003 is to try to eliminate some problems we have had that may have originated from the original 2000 Advanced Server installation.
I have a second server running Server 2003 Standard Edition that will temporarily host our website while the live server gets Server 2003 Standard Edition, IIS 6, etc. installed on it. We would like to preserve the user accounts, NTFS file permissions, and FrontPage access rights when we copy the data to the temporary server. When the installation of the OS and other software is completed on the live server, we want to then copy the data (along with the user accounts, passwords, etc.) back to the live server from the temporary server.
I do not have a domain or Active Directory setup on either server, nor am I supposed to use either a domain or AD on the server, as directed by my superiors. Is it possible to migrate user accounts, NTFS file permissions, and FrontPage access rights between two Windows Servers without the use of either a domain or AD? I have run across tools like IIS Export Utility, IIS Migration Tool, and ROBOCOPY, but I have only figured out how to use these tools to migrate the file permissions and FrontPage access rights. I still do not know how to migrate the user accounts between the server.
Of course, any help would be greatly appreciated.
We do not want to run an upgrade installation on our server. Part of the reason for moving to Server 2003 is to try to eliminate some problems we have had that may have originated from the original 2000 Advanced Server installation.
I have a second server running Server 2003 Standard Edition that will temporarily host our website while the live server gets Server 2003 Standard Edition, IIS 6, etc. installed on it. We would like to preserve the user accounts, NTFS file permissions, and FrontPage access rights when we copy the data to the temporary server. When the installation of the OS and other software is completed on the live server, we want to then copy the data (along with the user accounts, passwords, etc.) back to the live server from the temporary server.
I do not have a domain or Active Directory setup on either server, nor am I supposed to use either a domain or AD on the server, as directed by my superiors. Is it possible to migrate user accounts, NTFS file permissions, and FrontPage access rights between two Windows Servers without the use of either a domain or AD? I have run across tools like IIS Export Utility, IIS Migration Tool, and ROBOCOPY, but I have only figured out how to use these tools to migrate the file permissions and FrontPage access rights. I still do not know how to migrate the user accounts between the server.
Of course, any help would be greatly appreciated.
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you cant copy the passwords.
but the rest should be no problem.
but the rest should be no problem.
ASKER
If I cannot copy the passwords, what passwords will the user accounts have?
ASKER
I just tried the Hyena software, and it appears that I can copy users between Windows machines, and set a default password for these accounts. The problem of SIDs from one machine being different than the SIDs from the second machine still exists. I believe I read somewhere else on Experts-Exchange that a text dump of the SIDs from one server can be made so that ACLs could be imported with the appropriate SIDs, but that may be more work than just re-assigning FrontPage permissions manually for a couple of hundred FrontPage webs.
Thank you to WeHe for the suggestions and help.
Thank you to WeHe for the suggestions and help.
ASKER
It looks like where I read about the text dump of SIDs was above in WeHe's first comment :-)
ASKER
If dameware or hyena copy the users, passwords, descriptions, and groups between the servers, that would save me a great deal of time. In the two weeks of research I have put into this problem, this is the first I have heard of these tools.