With the support for many long established network operating systems coming to an end, now is that time that many companies should be looking to upgrading their infrastructures. Whether migrating from an existing Windows NT 4.0 infrastructure or from another vendor such as Novell NetWare, the benefits of moving to a more advanced and integrated system can not be underestimated.

Active Directory and Windows Server 2003 is more than the next generation in the long-running Windows family. It is a serious pitch by Microsoft to provide the enterprise with a scalable and reliable platform for the future. Many organisations are looking to Windows 2003 to form the bedrock of their future development. Migrating to Active Directory and Windows Server 2003 can obviously not be approached lightly. It requires a methodical approach and tight control over the various phases of the project. However, it can also be a staged approach carried out over a number of months or even years.

The migration to Windows 2003, from Windows NT 4.0 or Novell Netware, can be seen as an opportunity to cleanse data and directory structures and arrive at the other side of the migration with a much enhanced environment.

Challenges

A migration raises many additional challenges and opportunities for the enterprise. In particular Microsoft’s directory service, Active Directory (AD), will play a large part in determining the success and longevity of your Windows environment. Very simply, the AD is designed to be the central store or meta-repository for information about all of the entities in the network. These entities or objects can be users, printers, servers, files, etc; basically anything that is connected to the network. In addition, the AD is responsible for the control and management of the complex relationships between these entities. Whilst this provides the enterprise with a single point of administration for its critical resources, it is clear to see that the design and implementation of the AD will be absolutely fundamental to the deployment of Windows 2003.

Why Migrate?

Windows 2003 migration appears to be gaining momentum among the IT community with the most common reasons quoted being;

• A desire to consolidate network operating systems
• Uncertainty about the current Network Operating System’s long-term viability
• The desire to run applications such as Exchange 2003 that require Active Directory

At this time many organizations will find them selves with many possibly disconnected systems and a large overhead due to the management of these systems. Windows 2003 helps to merge these systems into a single management entity. Many of the issues that would previously have resulted in requiring numerous separate domains have now been resolved.

The fact that support for these older systems such as NT 4.0 is becoming more expensive to obtain, and that new software simply doesn’t work with these older versions again makes a compelling reason to migrate.

Other organisations have decided to change platforms due to a desire to roll out Microsoft Exchange 2003, which requires Active Directory. Often this is due to takeovers and mergers which can result in disparate systems requiring consolidation into a single directory structure.   

How do you go about it?

Although the number and scale of issues involved in migrating to Active Directory may seem numerous and insurmountable, a careful planned approach can mean that the project can be accomplished in manageable stages. This gives support staff and end users time to learn the new features available before pushing ahead with the next stage.

For organisations coming from other vendors the first hurdle to overcome is brand loyalty. Organisations will have spent a long time and a fair expense on certifying NetWare engineers (CNE) they will now have to re-train or employ their staff to the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certification. It is important therefore to understand that Windows 2003 at its most basic level is pretty compatible, philosophically, with NetWare 4 and 5. People who understand NetWare and NDS are more than technically qualified to be involved in a Windows 2000 migration.

This being said, it is important that the organisation understand that NDS and Active Directory still have many differences. NDS can be partitioned, but every Active Directory server runs a complete version of the directory tree. And while both directories allow permissions to be "inherited" from parent directories higher in the directory tree, both implement inheritance in a different way - making a straightforward transfer of administrative permissions and file permissions impossible. Differences like these make it imperative that the migrating organisation uses an external consulting resource to ensure a smooth transition.

Plan your Migration

An organisation can carry out a lot of the tasks involved in their migration, relying on consultants such as Consilium UK to design and build your Active Directory and oversee the project implementation. There are several important steps that should be considered when planning your migration, these include:

• Discover, Assess and Clean your Data
• Optimise and Reconfigure your Domains
• Model and Design an AD Structure
• Migrate and restructure the Data
• Run in Parallel

During the migration the organisation will discover a lot about their internal directory and data structure. This will inevitably result in various stages of iteration before the full benefits of Windows 2003 will be utilised.