Constraints to Restructuring Domains
in a Windows 2000 Forest
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.
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