Replacing an NT PDC

[3dge14]

Hello,

If I replace a Windows NT4 PDC with a Zentyal 2.0 PDC (same domain name and all users added w/same credentials) will the Windows XP clients see this as a new domain and create new user accounts for them? Or will it authenticate the same as before, preserve the user account from the old NT4 domain thus keeping all settings and desktop configurations(locally)?

Thank you

[ctek]

i think it will be beter to first sync Zential with the current NT PDC and after that try to replace
Try a Master - Slave setup if you want to preserve the current files/users etc

Best regards
Bogdan

[Jan Jacobs]

hmz.. in windows you can replicate to a slave, then promote that slave to a master..
*in theory* you should be able to sync with a zentian server, and then remove the NT box from the domain, setting then zenty as a master, but be carefull though, windows security might be in the way, i advise you to google first an amount of information, and tutorials and such (and keep your NT box at hand in case it fails)

[3dge14]

Thanks for the responses.

Everything I have seen tells me that setting up Zentyal as the backup domain controller is not possible and thus syncing credentials will not work.  I am hard researching the process, it may be possible with other Ubuntu (samba) distros but doesn't seem possible with this one.  My main concern is preserving account data on each computer locally without having to move all settings over to a new XP accounts (same domain name, new domain)

[Jan Jacobs]

there's a new activesync tool available made by the devs, maybe its of any use for you

[FutureTechSys]

I recently did an in-place upgrade of an existing PDC in windows with a new one.

If you are talking 50 clients or less, IMO, the best way to do it would be to create a new domain and join all of the clients to it, and copy the profiles and login scripts over.

AD turns into a total mess very quickly when trying certain things, and if I had it to do over again, I would simply have recreated the domain and migrated the users over manually.