Any Server 2003 Sysadmins present?

[USS KG5]

Dear All,

I am having a b*tch of a time trying to migrate my sbs2003 domain to new hardware.

I followed MS's instruction sheet from the technet library to the letter and have set my new server up as a DC, transferred the operations master roles, its a global catalog, and after some work there are no netdiag or dcdiag errors.

BUT - the second half of the SBS install will not run, coming up with the blocking error "cannot connect to all domain controllers" - this is a pig as the DNS seems to be fine.

Whats wrong, how can I fix it? As a clue the system takes about ten minutes on "preparing network connections" on boot and this is apparently related to a DNS problem.

Any ideas anyone??

 

[Marc]

You could be hitting a limit with the SBS design in that it's only allows on SBS server per domain and it's detecting your existing sever.

Also check your DNS server and ensure the AD entries are there but they will be pointing to your existing SBS server.

Because of everything that ties with SBS you're not going to be able to demote the server.

Does the Technet documentation refer to SBS or just to Windows Server?

 

[USS KG5]

I have a feeling that this might be an SBS being a bastard problem - it could just as easily mean "will not contact" as "cannot contact"...

The document is for SBS2003 - in theory you have a 7-day "grace period" to have both sbs boxes as domain controllers before the sbs bit of the software gets cross and start rebooting your server.

However, this just does not seem to be working in my case - anyone ever had this problem before? I have found no useful help at all on the net really.

There is very little on the server (no exchange, no isa server) so I could just reinstall a new domain on the new server, add the user accounts again and so on - but this will involve a huge amount of work over a weekend sorting out every pc to join this new domain, with everyone losing personal settings in the process.

There must surely be a better way???

 

[jkladis]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884453

 

[USS KG5]

The steps there and those in the similar linked migration article are the ones I have tried to follow - hence my confusion at the problems I have had.

 

[Marc]

The steps there and those in the similar linked migration article are the ones I have tried to follow - hence my confusion at the problems I have had.

About halfway down it lists the conditions for the installation and one of them is that there can only be one SBS per domain so it's not going to let you install the second.

 

[USS KG5]

On the linked migration document though it says it should install and let you have a 7-day grace period.

Thanks for the help guys - I have a plan B now so I'm going to go with that.

 

[Marc]

On the linked migration document though it says it should install and let you have a 7-day grace period.

Thanks for the help guys - I have a plan B now so I'm going to go with that.

Bit misleading - the 7 day grace period is the from the time you install the Windows Server component till the time you complete the SBS install process.

What's your plan B?

Came across a similar question on another website and my suggestion was to build a second server to hold all the domain information which would then be replicated to the SBS server then wiped.

 

[USS KG5]

My Plan B takes advantage of the old server having very little in active directory.

Basically I have created a new domain, and I'm going to recreate my users, configure them and then migrate them one department at the time, when I do that moving their files and detaching the relevant databases from the old SQL Server and re-attaching to the new one.

Pain in the butt but no way around it seemingly.