I need to migrate our domain out of a larger forest. Our domain name is old.domain.com. Looking for some guidance and advice. Let me describe our environment a bit.
We are part of a large private fiber network and will remain on that network. We are a small shop of about 700 users and 700 Windows Clients. All servers are 2008 R2 and above. We use IP printing. We have two web applications in our Linux Oracle Environment. We do not have Exchange email at this time. We have no SCCM. My plan is as follow. Mind you I am in the early stages of this plan. I have a 3 node file cluster. We have about 60 servers that host various applications and services but nothing that jumps out and screams big problem. (McAfee EPO, Citrix (Small foot print), A door security application etc..) Most of these servers can be rebuilt with little to no disruption in service.
We are abandoning the old.domain.com and upon completion old.domain.com will be removed from the forest. With that said we need to keep the name space old.domain.com.
Our DNS zones for old.domain.com are zone transferred to to several enterprise DNS servers. Our internet presence is with regards to DNS is handled by the enterprise.
- We plan to use ADMT to migrate the users and groups not the workstations. We chose this because as part of this we are going to stand up SCCM in the new forest and re-image workstations and join them to the new forest. Workstations have little to know data stored on them.
- Regarding the file cluster. As stated above, my plan is to migrate users, groups and bring workstations in by reimaging. Users will continue to access the file cluster in the old forest while I build a new cluster in the new. At which time I will use something like Robocopy to sync the data and permissions. Test and then cut users over to new file cluster.
- Things like McAfee EPO and Citrix because they are so small I will just rebuild. McAfee will pick up new client PC’s after their re-image. Citrix I will just have to recreate the half a dozen applications there.
- I will use ADMT to migrate GPO’s as well.
- DNS – during the migration I will use forwarders to the old forest to keep things such as printers and our applications working seamlessly. At some point in the migration process I would like the new forest to take over hosting the old.domain.com zone for the foreseeable future.
- DHCP – Not sure how I am going to handle this since we are not migrating workstations. My thought was once leave DHCP in the old forest until workstations are moved then recreate in the new forest making necessary adjustments.
This is a rough sketch of my plan. I am looking for some insight and advice from people who have faced this same scenario. Not sure what the new name will be for the forest but perhaps something like Newdomain.local and host the old.domain.com DNS for internet and application presence.