MCTS Windows 12 ConfigurationUsing the Active Directory Migration Tool
It’s no secret that Windows Server 2008 isn?t the first version of Windows Server ever made. In fact, it’s far from it. And it’s also no secret that along the way the saga of Windows Server has had some serious ups and downs, along with a lot of dramatic A+ Exams changes. What is commonplace now didn?t even exist in the first few versions of Windows. If you speak to an administrator who started in the beginning and then quit before things started to get a little less hectic, tHere’s a strong chance they may not even know what Active Directory is, much less how to administer it.
Like Windows, most enterprise-level businesses are not new creatures. Many of them (if not most) have been around since before the days of even the first version of Windows, much less Windows Server. What this means for administrators at the enterprise level is that although the versions of Windows might quickly change and the technology may very well adapt on a daily basis, businesses simply do not. In fact, the first rule of IT in a lot of busi-nesses is as follows: ?If it ain?t broke, Don’t ?x it.?
Apart from being pretty funny, that is incredibly accurate. When new versions of Windows Server are added, it can create some incredibly complex problems. In this chapter, we?re going to explore the process of mixing old technology with new. And along with covering the pro-cess of integrating that old technology, we?re going to cover the process of changing from the old technology to the latest version of Windows Server, which is Windows Server 2008. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to transition your organization from what- ever version of Windows is running to Windows Server 2008 or integrate Windows Server 2008 smoothly into your current architecture.
One of the words that you’re going to see used throughout your 70-647 exam MCSE Exams and through-out your career in the IT world is migration . Migration is just a marketing term that means transferring from one place to another, transferring from one version to another, or both. In the older days of administration, migration was an ominous task that took a lot of plan- ning, design, and best implementation practices. Mainly, this was because of the inherent dif?culty of transferring from a non-Active-Directory-capable environment to an Active Directory?capable environment. Obviously, there were problems.
In the world of Windows Server 2008, those concerns are mostly gone. The days of Windows NT are numbered, and it is rare that you will find an organization that doesn?t implement Active Directory in some form throughout the enterprise. This changing of the guard occurred in the age of Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003.