# Moving Active Directory to a new server



## wisdum (Dec 1, 2005)

I have a question i haven't been able to find much information about:

How do you move active directory from an old server running Windows Server 2003 to a new server that will be running 2003. Its just a hardware upgrade, but i would like to know the easiest (and most reliable) way to do it.

Also,

The company i was hired onto has several sites in the same campus, but when they setup all their servers they did it half-assed and gave each their own domain (without actuallly getting the name space)

Now, we are building a campus wide network and would like to restructure AD into a forest... can this be done without destroying AD and having to rebuild it from the ground up? Any links would be very helpful!

Thanks to everyone who has helped me in the past!


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## TheDude5555 (Aug 26, 2006)

The first question is the easier one. You first run dcpromo on the second server, which will install Active Directory and promote it to being a domain controller in your existing domian. You can then choose to retire your old server, which will involve moving FSMO roles to the new server, removing the global catalog and then finally running dcpromo on the old server to demote it to a member server in the domain. All in all probably will take about 30 min to an hour. Then second question is much more involved. You will need to set up trusts between the different forests, migrate objects and then finally retire the unneeded domains. Microsoft has several articles on Technet which will describe the process which can be quite lengthy if you desire to do it with the least amount of user interuption. They also have tools such as the Active Directory Migration Tool which will be very useful to you in this project. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326480/en-us

I would suggest setting up test servers and workstatios and doing run throughs of this as there are several points that can give you problems along the way. Good luck my friend.

MCSE Certified. (helps ever so much in this situation) just kidding dude, couldn't help but take a jab.


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## wisdum (Dec 1, 2005)

The Dude,

I love the MCSE joke... I dont mean anything by it! Thanks a bunch for the help. I really appreciate it! Im gonna look into this but i might call on your expertise a bit more in the future!

Thanks again!


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