Server 2003 DC's to one unified 2008 R2 DC

Hey Matt,

We looked at doing a similiar migration in our school district. We ended up setting up a large domain and slowly bringing machines into the domain. We would pick 1/3 of the schools during the summer that were either getting new computers or were close to schools getting new comptuers and wipe them clean. Then join them to the domain.

A couple of questions:

What is the bandwidth like between schools? How is the network - mesh? Start? Buslike?

Do you have standard computers - ex: certain dell models?

Do you have standard software/image?

Just for personal knowledge, where are you located? We are down here in Georgia.

to consolidate from 51 to 1 domain means a major migration project.  You can use a tool like ADMT to migrate

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/06/19/admt-3-2-released.aspx

Now if you just wanted to add a 2008 R2 DC to each domain that is easy.  

Thanks

Mike

Jmoody

We are also in Ga.

A couple of questions:
What is the bandwidth like between schools?  We have 50 megs guaranteed burstable to 100 megs
How is the network? Star
Do you have standard computers - ex: certain dell models? We have several Dell models at the moment being used throughout the system.
Do you have standard software/image? We are trying to get to all Win 7 computers but yes we typically work of a specific image.
Just for personal knowledge, where are you located? We are down here in Georgia.

Thank you for your response

mkline71: thanks for the response.

Each one of the 51 school DC's is server 2003. With going to one domain we want to just get our AD structure in order and not so messed up. I have looked at other articels suggesting using the ADMT as well.

Where at in GA? Must be Atlanta area because I can't think of any district with 51 schools.

Because you have a decent connection, you may want to put just RODCs and BranchCache servers at each of the sites (if money permits).

The biggest piece of advice I can give is get a single basic image (just Windows 7) and deploy your software. It will save you so much time as you convert schools.

steinmto: Thank you, that is exactly the same articel i found this a.m. concerning doing this.

Thanks again.

Jmoody10:

We are in McDonough ga. Henry County public schools. All the school servers are VM's centrally located here at our data center.

www.henry.k12.ga.us

Thank you

Great city. I drive through it on my way to Helen sometimes. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me at Jmoody@glynn.k12.ga.us. We went through this same situation so I may be of a little use.

jmoody10:

Thank you sir.