Swing Migration and Small Business Server

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I get one question very often from many people on swing migration in SBS which is:

Can I swing migrate my SBS?

The answer is yes BUT if you are choosing this method then it is good to have fair understanding of few concepts like FSMO roles, DNS, Metadata, DCPROMO etc.(To know more about swing migration, CLICK HERE)

My next question to them is:

Qn. Why do you want to do a swing migration?

Most of the time answer is "Preserving the server name" so that clients could access the server shares by \\OLDSERVERNAME which I understand is important as you cannot instruct all users to change their habit of typing the old server name. The other few reasons could be login scripts mapping the network drives, roaming profile share etc. If these are the only reason then I would suggest using the aliases in DNS to access the new server by old name. It saves a lot of time.

STEPS:

1. Once you have completed the migration successfully i.e migrating sharepoint, wsus, active directory etc. Demote the old server. Make sure you clean up the DNS and remove the references of old server(A, SRV records etc) and also delete the old server computer account from active directory incase graceful demotion failed.

2. On New server, Install Support tools from SBS 2003 CD 2.

3. Open command prompt and type the following command:

netdom computername DestinationServerName /add:SourceServerName.DomainName.local

(SourceServerName.DomainName.local is the FQDN of the source server.)

PLEASE NOTE: This command requires you to raise the domain functional Level to "Windows Server 2003". By default any SBS installation would be at "Windows 2000 native". Before raising the functional level, make sure that your application etc would be fine with this change. To get more information on Windows Server 2003 Functional Levels, CLICK HERE.

What does this command do?

a. It populates msDS-AdditionalSamAccountName and msDS-AdditionalDnsHostName attributes with new dc name. You can confirm this by using adsiedit.msc checking the properties of DC NAME under domain partition.

b. It will also add a entry by the name "AlternateComputerNames" under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNSCACHE\Parameters.

4. Open Regedit

Locate and click the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:

Value name: DisableStrictNameChecking
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Decimal
Value: 1

At this point in time i would advise you to have a look at KB 281308 & 926642 for more details.

5. Once all is done, reboot the server and now you should be able to access the shares by old server name.