From: John Cuccia 

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:31:42 -0500, Richard B.  wrote:

>On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:17:29 -0500, "Geo"
 wrote:
>
>>I'd upgrade the NT4 machine (PDC) to 2003 then I'd bring the new 2003 server
>>online and promote it to PDC then take the old machine offline. I think you
>>can get away with that if you never activate the upgrade machine.
>
>I had considered but was thinking 'what if' it had trouble with the
>upgrade.  Lately my luck has been a bit in the red. 
>
>Thing is, the AutoCAD license manager is running on the PDC and it is
>bound to the NIC address/server name/all that jazz.  Since we are
>planning to upgrade AutoCAD in the spring, I thought I'd change it to
>the new server at that point.   So I think it would be easier to leave
>the old machine online until after that AutoCAD/license manager
>upgrade.

You shouldn't have to take the old machine off-line immediately if you use
a 180-day eval version of the software.

If you prefer, you can install NT4 on the new machine, configured as a BDC,
then promote it to PDC, then upgrade it.

If you run your AD domain in Windows 2000 Server mixed mode (the
installation default), you can leave the old NT4 server on-line as a BDC
for as long as you like.

Otherwise, you have to build a separate AD domain and migrate users,
groups, etc.  Microsoft has a tool to help with this but I've never used
it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=788975b1-5849-4707-981
7-8c9773c25c6c&DisplayLang=en

In either case (upgrade an NT4 machine or build a parallel AD domain and
migrate), I think the Administrator's Companion I mentioned in an earlier
message is essential.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5