Upgrading my company network

eidolon · 1 Mar 2006 at 12:42

I work for a smallish company which has the following network setup.

1 x Windows NT4 server (acting as primary domain controller with file serving and SQL server roles)
1 x Windows NT4 server (acting as backup domain controller with Exchange server role)

We're looking to upgrade our accounts software which requires us to move to SQL 2005 and Windows 2003 server so I thought I'd ask for advice on the best way to tackle this.

The SQL/File server is probably straining a bit so it makes sense to split those roles onto 2 separate servers and the Exchange server can continue on its own server as before.

What order would you suggest I do the upgrade in? Due to time constraints I plan on doing the upgrade piece by piece so I'd planned on leaving the current Exchange server in place until the file server and SQL server had been set up (then change over to Exchange 2003). Any tips and pointers on how to progress?

eidolon · 1 Mar 2006 at 23:23

topher said:
Are you planning to upgrade the domain to 2003 or leave it and add the 2003 server to the NT4 domain as member server?

from what I remember Microsoft dont recommend having Exchange on a DC.

I was planning to upgrade the domain to 2003. I was thinking of the following order of events

Add SQL 2005 server to domain as member server. Remove databases from old SQL server and point clients to new server.
Add Exchange 2003 server to domain as member server. Remove old Exchange 5.5 server from domain.
Add file server to domain and dcpromo it. Remove old file server

Would this work or am I better off starting with the file server/DC?

eidolon · 2 Mar 2006 at 08:15

So would the best thing to do be to leave the existing network alone while setting up a new mini network consisting of the new DC and SQL server. Then once I'm happy that the new network is working ok, swap the old PDC/SQL server over for the new one (can I leave the old Exchange 5.5 server in place for now? How will that work with the new AD domain?)

Then when time allows just replace the Exchange 5.5 with 2003

eidolon · 2 Mar 2006 at 14:02

Shoei said:
I was doing on average 2 to 3 trial upgrades a day from NT4 to Win2k3, just so i could iron any problems out, end result was it took me 4 hours one saturday morning to do the migration and users never noticed any change.

I think this is the way I'll approach it too. I've got new hardware and the software ready so I'll do some testing off network and just come in over a weekend to do it for real. I'm not bothered about losing the user, groups and mailboxes etc. as I'd like to take this opportunity to start afresh (some users are hogging far too much space).

Thanks for the pointers, wish me luck!