SBS 2003 new hardware migration question

No migration method will "clean up" an improperly managed system.  You'll see it documented in all migration manuals that your first task BEFORE migration is to do the clean up.

Depending on how many users you have, it may just be easier to do a manual migration... meaning that you build the new domain and then migrate Exchange Mailboxes with EXMerge (www.sbsurl.com/exmerge) and data files with a USB hard drive.  And you leave the old domain behind to die a slow painful death.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

By doing it manually...is it possible to keep the same IP address and domain name so that nothing changes for the users as far as connecting?  Is there any documentation on doing this manually besides the above link?  Thanks!

Are the users in the stock SBS OU SBSUsers?

Use the built in wizard to create a test user to see if anything is broken first.

The Swing will work with the existing setup, you will inherit the full Active Directory setup, and maintain the desktop profiles. This means that you will inherit the "customizations" too. :)

Are there any custom OUs? Are there any custom GPOs?

A nice thing about Swing is it can be used to clean up a lot of AD garbage and help to reduce the number of Group Policy Tattoos.

I suggest looking into it deeper if you haven't taken the plunge on purchasing the kit.

Philip

No...the users are in another OU.  Most AD changes and additions have not been made through the SBS mgmt. interface.  It has basically been setup as if it were a regular Windows 2003 AD domain.  There are other custom OUs and group policies as well.  What do you recommend at this point?

I added a test user with the SBS Server Manager with no problems...

The test user has shown up in the SBSUsers group?

Are there any custom Group Policy Objects (GPOs)?

In order:

Server Management Console
Advanced Management
Group Policy Management Console
  Find the OU that the users are in
  Any linked GPOs should be there.
  If there are any, their settings can be quickly fired off to a printer by clicking the settings tab in the right pane and right clicking anywhere the settings come up.

If need be, you could translate the custom OU/GPO links to the SBSUsers during the Swing.

Another suggestion is to run the wizard against a user you create using the manual process and have placed in that OU (run GPUpdate /force after), and use the  "change user's permissions" and make sure the "reset permissions" is ticked for the process. The wizard should set the appropriate permissions, and move the user over to the SBSUsers default OU. Let me know how that proceeds.

Philip

"is it possible to keep the same IP address and domain name so that nothing changes for the users as far as connecting"

You can use the same internal domain name but you really don't want to use the same IP's because you should be using DHCP on your workstations.  Furthermore you MUST unjoin you worksations from the current domain and rejoin them properly with the ConnectComputer wizard.  If you just leave them as is, there will be a SID mis-match and they won't be able to connect... whether or not the domain  or IP's remain the same.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

Look... you want to have a clean install here.. and not bring over problems from the old one.. so while you might want to backup your GPO's you probably don't really want to import them into your new domain.  It's better to rebuild what's needed... because it's probable that the first guy made some GPO's that were redundant to the default ones in SBS.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

Maybe the manual way is the cleanest way to go then at this point...

TSE,

I guess we are going to need to agree to disagree eh? :D

Philip

I'm sorry, I didn't think I was disagreeing with you... I just think that it's pointless to try to repair something that cbsykes has already determined to be a pretty poor configuration.  Because what you are suggesting is to totally rebuild the current AD and DNS structure so it's in perfect shape to migrate.  It mosst definitely would take longer to do that than it would to manually migrate.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

Is that with or without the desktop profiles? That is where the big price is to be paid along with the price to the user. If there are only 5 or 6 users on the network, then yes, by all means ... go for it.

But, if we are talking about 10-20+ users, the cost in time to migrate those desktops ... keep in mind user grief here ... is too high in my opinion.

We have gone in and cleaned out some pretty whacky Active Directory structures via the Swing method. It works well, and it helps to avoid Group Policy Tattoos as mentioned before.

And, no need to apologize. :D

Philip

Desktop profiles will be migrated automatically because the way the ConnectComputer wizard works is it maps whatever local profile you select to the domain account you are assigning to the machine.  Regardless of the previous SID.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

One note on that... it never hurts to run the XP Files & Settings Transfer Wizard on each machine before removing them from the domain.  It's a good away to ensure a backup of the profile.  This can actually be done via RDP and if you use the Remote Desktop Console in the Administrative Tools you can connect to all desktops at the same time.  (See screenshot at http://sbsurl.com/m.jpg).

Jeff
TechSoEasy

If I were to begin planning to do this migration "manually"...in what order should everything be completed?  Is there documentation on the manual process.  Would it be possible to begin setup of SBS 2003 on a new server now and configure it identical to the current one?  Then once all configuration is complete...swap it with current one?  I realize I would need to take down current one to exmerge everything from Exchange.  Any help on this process would be appreciated!

Thanks and sorry for the delay.