Renaming a Domain

[Neutron]

My wife's company is small, with only one server/one domain. Her boss wants to rename their domain.

They are on Server 2003 Small Business Edition. Their one and only server is of course the domain controller that hosts their active directory and files.

What all is involved in renaming their domain? I know I will need for all of their workstations to join the new domain. Will everyone lose their profiles?

 

[Ramy]

Profiles on thier local box? or in Active Directory?

I think as long as the login name is the same they will keep all their local profile information. I have never done this before so don't take this as 100% accurate.

 

[Pepper]

2003 "domain rename" - Google Search

Check the first few articles here.

 

[StevenD]

Domain rename is NOT supported in 2003 SBS.

 

[Neutron]

Crap, so I will have to basically rebuild their domain then?

 

[Pepper]

Only if they want to pay you to do that. I hope this isn't a "freebie"

 

[navychop]

Why the change? Did he name it after a former girlfriend?

We devoted a great deal of thought to coming up with network.local!

 

[docpadds]

We devoted a great deal of thought to coming up with network.local!

Our company domain is what were called 2 incarnations/bankrupt companies ago, well before my time. With 700 workstations and a shrinking IT staff i am not about to make my guys change it.

Its quite doable with time in a 2003 domain (though not SBS) but with Exchange/Sharepoint adding to the mix it gets messy.

With SBS you need to start all over again unfortunately, but then that has its upsides if you need to redesign anyway.

 

[Neutron]

Only if they want to pay you to do that. I hope this isn't a "freebie"

Oh trust me, he will pay for me to do this. Like when I installed his server a year and a half ago, I will charge him a flat fee vs my normal hourly fee. This is only fair to him as I don't know if there will be an issue or not.

 

[docpadds]

Couple of the caveats i can think of:

Sign workstations off domain into a workgroup (and make sure you have local admin pass).

Export Email to PST files using either Outlook or the Migration toools for exchange. EXMERGE works great but dont loose the paswords for the PSTs if you set them. Newest EXMERGE is very nice, i beleive you can use the new 2007 one on 2003 exchange.

Mailboxes take about an hour a gig on a smaller slower system to export, a little more to import.

When you import the PST files from the old exchange store, it is very possible that users cannot reply to any of those emails. So if they have one from a few days ago they want to reply to, they cannot. (this is generally not a big deal as long as you let them know to make a new email not reply to existing ones before the move).

Really loosing their profiles isnt a big deal. As long as you are local admin you can copy their Favorites folder into the new profile along with anything they kept on desktop.

Its a great opportunity to tell them to move all to the network, dont expect the desktop to be the same etc...

-Jonathan

 

[charper1]

Do these articles fit?

Domain Rename – Rename a Windows 2003 Forest with Exchange 2003 installed


http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2006/06/07/Domain-Rename-Part-1-_2D00_-Setup.aspx

 

[Neutron]

Fortunately email is hosted outside the network, so there's no Exchange server.

Email is already stored in PST files.

 

[docpadds]

Fortunately email is hosted outside the network, so there's no Exchange server.

Email is already stored in PST files.

Nice, thats 90% of the hassle gone.

 

[Pepper]

This tool: Download details: Active Directory Migration Tool v3.0 will do everything you want, but it kind of depends on domain controllers for the old and new domains to be existing simultaneously. Not so easy if you're not building a new server but just trying to repurpose the old one.

We used that a couple of times for customers who were migrating to a new SBS from an older version, in most cases the workstation migrated right over with no loss of desktop, shortcuts, etc. The exceptions were those where we didn't follow the instructions correctly or the user had messed with stuff like group policy on their own causing the tool to have problems accessing what it needed to run properly, or a laptop that didn't happen to be on site when we migrated, it had to be manually unjoined/joined and the profiles rebuilt.