Transferring user areas from 2k3 to 2k8

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Afternoon everyone, been a while since i've managed to pop on here or do any certs but it's a good excuse in the way that i've gotten a new job, but new certs should start rolling in from here on out .

Over the next few weeks, i've been tasked with moving user's personal areas from a Server 2003 machine to a Server 2008 machine and just wondering what the best way to do it is, it's only a couple of hundred users so not to much anyway so if it's going to be easier doing it manually, it's not a problem.

How i was going to do it is to change the user's home area location within the AD account over from the old server \\fileserver\loginname$, which is how it's set currently, to \\fileserver2008\users$\%loginname% - this will then generate a new folder within the users$ share for the users and then copy and paste the contents of the old user folders over to the new user folders individually, or is there a better way of doing it i.e. copying the user folders over to the users$ share and then changing the AD profiles to point to it, which should overwrite the permissions for the user areas anyway?

 

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I'd use NTBackup on the 2K3 server to backup all the user areas. Then restore backup on the new server and all the NTFS permissions should be intact. NTBackup isn't on 2K8 any more, but you can download a version from MS that will restore old backups, but won't do anything else. As for the shares, you seem to already have that covered.

 

I usually use robocopy for stuff like this. It will preserve the permissions for you and will be resilient to failures and will give you a log etc. There is also the MS file migration tool which I did use once http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ae-930a-42b0-b595-66f462f5d87b&displaylang=en . I also like to use DFS so you don't have to mess around changing paths to shares etc when you move stuff around. DFS can synchronise with other replicas as well although I never trusted it for data that changes all the time like user areas.

 

I would use and recommend robocopy seeing that you have the share path covered.

 

Not done this I could be wrong, I would probably backup the system state using the NTBackup and transfer over to the Server 2008, then do a restore to an alternate location using NTBackup and then add a additional domain using the dcpromo /adv, browse the restored location so use have an additional domain and make sure both Server 2003 and Server 2008 replicate each other in Active Directory Sites and Services. Then in Active Directory on the Server 2008 transfer it as the master server.

 

I like also note you just need to used the wizard to add the domain controller and check the option for addtional domain controller rather using dcpromo /adv if you wish.

 

I'd echo the use of Robocopy to do the copy and then use ADModify to bulk modify the usermappings in AD.

 

Regarding the copying of the user data, Robocopy is certainly useful, but Microsoft has also published a file server migration tool ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ae-930a-42b0-b595-66f462f5d87b&displaylang=en ) which has worked flawlessly for me in the past.

The article even specifically mentiones 2003 and 2008, so should be supported in your scenario. A slightly easier alternative to robocopy.