Part of our DR documentation/planning involves renaming computers. For example, we may have a cold or hot DR server. For server "MYSERVER" with IP "MYIP", we would have a corresponding server "MYSERVER_DR" with IP"MYIP_DR".
In a DR scenario, our documentation basically asks us to go to "MYSERVER_DR" and rename it to "MYSERVER".
Is this a good idea to rename objects like this?
What occurred in our last test was that renaming MYSERVER_DR to MYSERVER, before doing this, I have to shutdown MYSERVER and remove the MYSERVER computer object from AD (maybe I should have unjoined MYSERVER before starting?!).
So MYSERVER_DR was renamed to MYSERVER successfully. After the DR test, MYSERVER was then renamed back to MYSERVER_DR, and the original MYSERVER was brought back online.
Well MYSERVER came up with the typically "No trust relationship" message. I was able to login to MYSERVER with a local account, then changed it to a WORKGROUP to try to rejoin it. The server would not boot at this point, stopping at"Applying Computer Settings...".
I was eventually able to book into safe mode, have the server boot, and then rejoin it to AD. At that point all was well, but it was a stressful event...
Comments?