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mattaiFlag for United States of America

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Renaming Domain, migrating a 2003 AD Domain Controller, and Exchange 2003

Hello,

Recently my organization has undergone a lot of changes and we want to both rename a domain, and migrate it to a new DC.

The reason we want to rename the domain is because the name is from our old organization that is no longer in business after our restructure. Unfortunately we have to continue to use the same AD information such as groups/servers/etc. I'd like to try and keep the user and group information in tact. (This was a higher level decision, if it was up to me i'd leave the domain name alone).

Secondly, the PDC was set up on a Dell Desktop PC, and I would like to move it onto a REAL server that i've already installed MS Windows 2003 Server R2 on to.

Lastly, we also use MS Exchange 2003, which throws another level of complexity into all of this, since exchange is heavily reliant on AD. At what point do i transition the info/configs in exchange? or do i blow exchange away and reconfigure? (scary).

I guess my questions are, should I rename the domain first, then perform the migration, or should I just set up a whole new domain by scratch and start over again (which I'd rather not do). And what about Exchange?

If we're going to do a rename and migration, would anyone recommend best practices on how to do this? How about a good exchange tool?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
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ollfried
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Have a look at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb405948.aspx You can download Microsoft's rendom.exe and documentation there.
I renamed a domain lately before migrating to SBS 2008 and it worked like a charm. In your case I would setup the new server, transfer FSMO roles to it an d then rename the domain. You will have to reboot DCs several times and also all other members and computers twice. But - it's worth the effort.
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snusgubben
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Thanks guys.. I think I'll go with ADMT, then run the exchange utility once I know that the new domain is working okay. I've downloaded the ADMT documentation so I'll go ahead and review that first. I have one more question--

We are a non-profit, so we're trying to do this as cheap as possible. I was hoping to use my existing Windows 2003 Server license and CALs. Is this possible? Or do we need to purchase everything to transition this properly?

Also, I can't seem to locate any of the license information from the previous sys admin regarding the licenses and CALs. What is the best way to try and obtain this info?

Thanks in advance!