Schlagwort: Windows

Domain Controller Upgrade

We finally started upgrading the domain controllers (DCs) here at Translink, which are currently running Windows Server 2003, to Windows Server 2008 R2. Yay! As I told you in a previous post, this is necessary for the Exchange 2010 migration to start.

On Thursday after lunch Rory, a server technician working for Northgate, came to our office to support us with the migration.

First we set up a temporary (virtual) DC, moved the services and copied the FSMO roles to it.

Now we could start upgrading the DCs. As Windows Server 2008 R2 doesn’t allow an in-place upgrade from Windows Server 2003, we had to do a complete new installation. So we demoted the first DC to a normal member server and then removed it from the domain. Now we could install the new operating system, get a cup of tea, do some basic configurations, join the freshly installed server to the domain and run dcpromo to make it a DC again. Of course we repeated this procedure for all DCs, one at a time.

Finally we moved the FSMO roles back to the DCs they were initially running on, moved the services … and Bob’s your uncle! 😉

In the end we left the office at approximately 19:30.

Active Directory Upgrade

This week I was introduced to another project at Translink: Plans are to upgrade the Active Directory infrastructure from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2. The project is realized in cooperation with the IT service provider Northgate.

One principal reason for running this project is that another project depends on this Active Directory upgrade: the migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.

A project assistant from Northgate came to the office to talk with my colleagues and me about the hardware (physical and virtual) and software requirements as well as the necessary network (re)structuring.

Getting the third week started

Thanks to the bank holiday, this week starts today, Tuesday. I’m still overwhelmed by all the impressions I got this weekend. I just can highly recommend to visit Tobi’s blog and read his post about our weekend. He describes our coast trip, which I described earlier, with much blood, sweat and tears and I think it’s worth reading it. I’m still working on building a Windows environment with an ESXi Hypervisor, which was delayed due to Installation problems. The versions 3.5 and 4.1 did not cooperate with the hardware I have to use, so I was told to install Citrix XenServer. I spend a lot of time working with ESXi Hypervisor in Berlin so I’m very familiar with this product and its advantages. I missed many of them when I tried to set up VMs with XenServer. So I decided to spend more time on getting ESXi installed and I succeeded! Version 5.1 seems to be compatible and finally I  can handle the basic work.