Migrating Fileserver and AD

BF2Mad

Hi,

We are moving to a new fileserver, moving the data and keeping the permissions is no problem however the fileserver stores our user profiles, h drives and terminal server profiles.

Does anyone have a script or know of any applications that will update Active Directory with the new server and share names?

Thanks

strauchr

I've only done it via a manual process. Not sure if there are any tools to do it for you.

BF2Mad

Manual is not an options there are over 500 users

Sie

Would believe you would need some 3rd Party Application to do this best.

However i suppose you could export AD data via the 'CSVDE' command line using relevant switches, this can then be edited in Excel in a 'Find & Replace' manner and imported back in.

I know its manual process but it does take many steps and is no where near as long as going into each users attributes.

Can somebody confirm if this would be possible or have i just dreamt this??

Danman32

The only problem I think you might have with profiles is that there are paths stored in the registry that may no longer work in a manually relocated profile. When you use the copy profile procedure, I believe it accounts for that and modifies the registry accordingly.

BF2Mad

Not a bad idea

I am going to do a small scale test, I will let you know how I get on.

Any other ideas?

geekie

Why not do a full backup of your server, System State and data and then restore it to your new box to see it works then go live with it?

Create a vanilla build of the box you want to restore making sure you have the relevant service packs and hotfixes installed then I tend to create a seperate partition on the box to copy the relevant loader and HAL files to just in case you have any HW differences i.e. if its Server 2k3

boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect hal.dll(Date of file should be 03/05 if SP1), ntoskrnl, ntkrnlpa and depending on what controller you have and if it's different, that too. We use HP proliants and the file is cpqcissm if I remeber rightly. I always install Recovery Console too just in case I need to copy any of those files back using that, saves time rather than having to boot in to the CD.

Boot in to DSRM, recover Sys State first, then copy relevant files back over. Re-boot back in to DSRM and allow P&P to initialize, make sure everything is OK then restore data.

strauchr

I did a similar migration for 300 user by myself in a 3 month period. Brand new AD environment create everything from scratch. Its been so long I have forgotten all the step and processes but like I said 3 months - total, design, plan and implementation.

500 should not take much longer and if you get 2 people it can be done a lot quicker. Better of creating from scratch and tidying it up for a small site like that. Just make sure you get your standards and conventions in place beforehand.

Arturasj

It should not be too much of a problem. Just backup all profiles and restore on the new server. Then you can replace the path to the profile in AD, OU by OU. You can do all users within a container at once. So the time spent would depend on the number of OUs.

Danman32

Actually, if you do a search for users, you don't have to go container by container.

blargoe

You can (from server 2003 or with 2003 admin tools installed on xp) select multiple user objects and change their profile attributes simultaneously.

If you have one location for user profiles and have folders named after the username, then do

\\path\to\profile\%username% <-for every user account you have highlighted, %username% will be replaced with the username once you apply the changes.

BF2Mad

Hi Guys,

Thanks blargoe, Danman32 and Arturasj I think this is going to be by far the best and fastest method

I only have limited time and resources getting rid of the old fileserver is just a tiny step in severalprojects so I do not want to spend more time than needed.

Thanks again guys, works good.

BF2Mad

This has worked fine for the users profiles however when doing a multi user selection there is no option to edit terminal services profiles or H drives.

Also under Advanced Search I can search for all of the users where their H drive is on the old server but there are no Advanced Search options for Terminal Services H drives or Profiles.

Any ideas?

agustinchernitsky

Mmmm you should create a VBS scripts that updates all users objects... maybe using LDAP queries... that should do it quite easy.

Suggestion: use a CNAME alias for the file sever next time... if you change the server name or the server itself, you just update the DNS record of the CNAME and there!

Just a suggestion.

PS: You can get samples of those scripts from MS technet site! I believe it was with ADSI you can create those scripts.

blargoe

If by H drive you mean the drive letter you have assigned to their home folder, that is available when you have multiple users selected if you go to the profile tab and check the box next to Home Folder to activate.

Danman32

I think he meant the home directory, which is usually addressed by UNC with an option to also specify a mapped drive letter.

BF2Mad

Hi Guys,

This is now sorted I changed the Profile Path and H Drive path using multi user selection (as above).

As there are no Terminal Services options when doing a mass user selection I created a VBS script to work with System Internals free tools TSCMD. The script looks at the old fileserver checks if the user exists on the new file server if so it runs TSCMD with a couple of arguments to update that users TS Profile and TS H Drive path and then moves onto the next user on the old fileserver.

If anyone is interested I can add a link to download a copy of a ZIP with the scripts, it is not perfect but it changed my 500 users fine in less than 5 minuets.