About 2 weeks ago, I put the wraps on the task of moving from one Windows domain to another here at NewPointe.  Overall, I would say that the operation went pretty well, and I’m satisfied with the way things progressed.  However, I would make some tweaks to the procedure if I ever had to do it again.

Planning

This is one area that I think, for as much as I knew about domain migrations at the time, we did pretty well with.  Our staff was notified of the changes that they would experience during the migration, account passwords were pre-created and form-mailed to each user (on paper), and the migration itself took place between Christmas and New Years, when the office is least populated.

Now that I know a little more about what’s going on during a domain rebuild, I would definitely communicate with the end-users more about what they would be experiencing.  We didn’t have a LOT of surprised users, but I would still like to keep the "gotchas" down to a minimum next time.

User Account Migration

For this project, because of my almost non-existant timeline, I decided to hand-create all the accounts, groups, and OUs on the new domain.  I didn’t mess with the AD Migration Tool for a couple reasons:  1.)  I had plenty of time to get my accounts created on the new domain, and 2.) I had no idea how reliable ADMT would be.  I definitely want to give it a try in a lab though.  If it works, fantastic … it will cut down drastically on the time it takes to create user accounts during a migration.

ExMerge

ExMerge, without a doubt, was the biggest stumbling block through the process.  I spent a total of 8 hours JUST on ExMerge, moving data from one Exchange server to another.  Since ExMerge can be run as an incremental operation, I should have run ExMerge a week before, and maybe a day before as well, to get data moved over ahead of time.  I would have cut some MAJOR time off of the operation.

Scripting

There’s a LOT of scripting I could have done to make this job easier, from file permissions to moving profiles around.  One thing I’ve realized is that I need to at LEAST learn VBscript so I can write some time-saving scripts.

In conclusion, I would say that a domain rebuild is definitely not something you want to jump into if you’re not sure you’ll need it.  There was much lost sleep over the event, and I’m definitely glad it’s over.  As I said before though, I’m generally pleased with how it went.  I’d be happy to answer any questions that anybody may have regarding the project, as well.

Saturday, 10:30am - The big thing for today?  Make sure the rest of the staff that hasn’t come in since Christmas can get their work done when they come in.

For the most part, this involved going from desktop to desktop, adjusting settings and making certain that each user can access their files and print.  Even waiting on ExMerge to finish was less painful than this, because I could at least do other things.  There’s some things I would have done differently here, but I’ll outline them in a later post.

After 8.5 painful hours of going from desk-to-desk, I finally adjusted and tested every PC that needed it.  Things were still not working like I wanted, especially in the way of GPOs.  I was tired though, and decided that I would let it ride until Monday and fix things then.

Sure, right…

Sunday, 2:00am - I awoke feeling nasty…VERY nasty.  I’m pretty sure it was something I ate, but regardless, I was unable to go back to sleep.  Hey… I’m awake, and I have to be at church early to direct video and prepare a movie clip.  May as well go in since my mind is pretty clear.

It’s amazing what you can do with some sleep!  Throughout the course of the morning, not only was I able to get the last handful of PCs switched over to the new domain, but with some testing, I also managed to iron out the GPOs issues that had plagued me the day before.  To make matters better, after doing some "wrenching" in Exchange, I got RPC-HTTP working just how it needs to be.  All this because of some stomach nasties … talk about a blessing in disguise. 

So as it now stands, our users are equipped to go back to work tomorrow.  Email is flowing everywhere it needs to be, shares and home directories are accessible by all users, printers are ready, and user profiles are switched over.  All that’s left is to bring the rest of the servers online, which should be doable within a day.

This has been both a grueling task (partly because of my time limitations) and a wonderful learning experience for me.  Expect to see a post coming up on how I would do this if I had to do it again (which I hope doesn’t happen anytime soon).

Total work time so far:  54 hours

Continuing where we left off…. here’s what is done so far:

1. All mail data is backed up.
2. New DC and Exchange servers are up
3. Mail is flowing. (Thanks to Ed and Justin)
4. I’ve got about 10 machines (out of 50) and 3 servers (out of 10) cut over to the new domain.

Friday, 2:00am - I woke from one of the best sleeps I’ve had in a long time, courtesy of my good friends Sealy and Unisom.  I’ve been asleep for about 10 hours now and I’m feeling pretty good.  There’s no point in going back to sleep, so I decide to clean up and head into work to try and get some things done while no one is around.

I spent a fair amount of the day wrestling with RPC-HTTPS for Exchange.  We introduced this to our laptop users, and taking it away for any amount of time is no longer an option.  :-)  With some help from Experts Exchange and the #citrt crowd, we finally had RPC-HTTP working by the end of the day.  It wasn’t perfected, but I was ecstatic that things were moving in the right direction.  I also took this time to get OWA and OMA working to my liking.  I had plenty of trouble with OMA, too.  I ended up re-creating the IIS folders before finally being able to sync Windows Mobile devices up.

The remainder of the day was spent troubleshooting user issues, moving machines to the new domain, and getting our macs reconnected to the "new" file server.  Everyone has been EXTREMELY gracious on staff in regards to what’s happening on their computers.

9:30pm - After a wonderful and final Christmas dinner with some family, I came back to move some more machines to the new domain.  Jess was with me, and was extremely helpful as we changed 11 more computers over in record time.  I’m blessed by the fact that she not only is OK with me being a geek, she understands what I do, and wants to help out as well.  (In case you’re wondering, Jess does not have admin rights, except on her iBook.)

Total work time so far:  44 hours

ExMerge is finally up and running.  Hallelujah. 

Still waiting on the backup queue to clear out.  Just a few more minutes and I should be able to start running ExMerge…

Well, things have been going along smoothly until I checked the backup server and realized that there are multiple jobs in the queue.

I’m not going to do this without an up-to-date backup, so it looks like I’m going to pause here and hunt the issue down.

UPDATE:  Looks like there was a configuration problem with our video server.  It was pumping full backups to our CommVault server WAY too often, and the 9TB array filled right up.  A little reconfiguration and purging, and things are back on track.

So far so good.  The office isn’t empty yet, so I’m taking care of the preliminaries.

• Preparing the external HD that will transport the ExMerge’d mail data to the new server.
• Running through the procedure a couple more times in my head.
• Get some RadioU playing in the office so it’s not so quiet.

Yeah, so this might by a little dorky. I don’t care. For your viewing enjoyment, the domain rebuild is going to be presented live on 2 different webcams. You can access them by following the links below.

Camera 1 - My Desk

Camera 2 - Mobile camera attached to my laptop.

Enjoy!

Update:  These cameras have long-since been taken offline, so don’t waste your time clicking on the links. 

Well, I’ve been talking about it on and off and today it’s finally going to happen:  At 17:30 today, I will be taking our domain controller and Exchange servers offline and moving over to a new Windows domain.

I’m going to try posting events as they happen, and who knows…maybe there will be a live webcam in the mix somewhere, just for fun.  Webcam or not, it’s going to be an exciting evening.

Things are going smooth — more so than I expected — in the preparations for the domain rebuild.  The last test was to run ExMerge between the old and new Exchange servers to make sure that I was able to get everyone’s mail/calendars/etc. into the new domain after the swap.  I’m happy to say that the ExMerge test run went off without a hitch.

At this point, I’ve got a scheduled “zero hour” for the fun to begin:  2007-12-26 @ 17:30. 

Am I nervous?  Oh yeah.  There’s going to be a certain point in the transition where I inevitably hit the point of no return.  From there, it’s going to be “new domain or bust,” and yes, I do plan on pulling an all-nighter simply because we will have some staff coming in the next day. 

As long as we have core functionality by the morning of December 27 (Exchange, proper file permissions, accounting permissions, calendaring), I think things are going to be OK.  I’ll have a list of staff who are coming in on the 27th, so I’ll know what PCs need switched over first.

More updates as this project continues.