Windows Server

Guest · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:51 pm Post subject: NT4 -> Windows 2003 DNS Confusion

I am the Network Admin (actually I'm a programmer, but I defaulted to
the network admin b/c I seemed to know the most - which isn't much)
for a small company. I am researching upgrading our NT 4 network to
Windows 2003 with AD. We have one NT 4 server acting as the PDC and no
BDC or DNS servers. My current upgrade plan is as follows:

1. Install NT 4 on what will be the Win2k3 PDC.
2. Promote this to a PDC, thus demoting the current PDC to a BDC
3. Once this is stable, take the BDC offline
4. Upgrade the PDC to 2003
5. Put the BDC back online

[quote]From what I have read this is a fairly standard way to upgrade and
seems pretty strait forward. My confusion starts with DNS:[/quote]

1. We do not have any internal DNS server, can I just install DNS when
I update to Win2k3? Will the cause any problems?

2. Our current domain name is a single word (no '.' in the name). Do I
have to rename before upgrading? We have no public domain name to
worry about.

Erik D · Guest

The plan you stated should be fine, it is the normal procedure.
During upgrade of NT4 to Win2003 on the new PDC an instance of dcpromo will
run where you have to opertunity to install DNS (the wizard can do it for
you) which will support the new AD. You basically have to do this.

You do not need to have "." in your domain name but it is recomended for
many reassons. You will have the option to name your DNS name during the
upgrade. The NetBIOS name (of the domain) will remain the same.

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