Course Overview
The restructuring
capabilities in a Windows Server 2003 forest
provide solutions to problems that are not
addressed in Windows 2000 Server family. In a
Windows 2000 forest, renaming domains is
essentially not possible after the forest
structure is in place without moving domain
contents or recreating them. The constraints
associated with making domain name changes or
domain-tree restructuring in Windows 2000 Active
Directory are prohibitive.
In a Windows 2000 forest, you cannot:
Change the DNS name or the NetBIOS name of a
domain. Although you cannot rename a domain, you
can achieve the same results by moving its
contents into a new domain that has the name you
want the existing domain to have. (Active
Directory Object Manager (MoveTree) in the
Windows 2000 Server family Support Tools can be
used to move directory objects between domains.)
Move a domain within a forest in a single
operation. As above, you can clone items in and
move items from a domain, but you cannot move
the entire domain itself within a forest.
Split a domain into two domains in a single
operation. To split a domain, you must create a
new domain and then move appropriate users and
resources from the existing domain into the new
domain.
Merge two domains into a single domain in a
single operation. To merge domains, you must
move all the contents from one of the domains
into the other and then demote all domain
controllers in the empty domain and decommission
it.
Thus, in a Windows 2000 forest, significant
administrative overhead is associated with
performing such manual move operations to
achieve the domain-tree restructuring or
renaming one or more domains.
Constraints to Restructuring Domains in a
Windows Server 2003 Forest:
Windows Server 2003 family provides tools with
which you can safely rename domains to
restructure a Windows 2003 forest. When making a
decision about whether to restructure an
existing Windows Server 2003 forest, be sure to
consider what you cannot do with forest
restructuring. Although a Windows 2003 forest
has forest restructuring capability, certain
types of structural changes are not supported.
In a Windows Server 2003 forest, you cannot:
Change which domain is the forest root domain.
Changing the DNS or the NetBIOS name of the
forest root domain, or both, is supported.
Drop domains from the forest or add domains to
the forest. The number of domains in the forest
before and after the rename/restructure
operation must remain the same.
Rename a domain with the same name that another
domain gave up in a single forest restructure
operation.
