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Upgrading from NT4 to Active Directory 2003
jotate
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright, some back story. I work for the IT department of a small/medium sized company. Last week, my former boss was demoted and I was put in his place. Long story short, the owners of the company don't like buying pieces of equipment for one price and then finding out that there's another piece three times as expensive that they need in order to make the first piece work. (Foreshadow!)
By trade, I'm not really a system admin kind of guy. I did programming in college and they moved me to data analysis when I started here about 8 months ago. The owners were impressed with my business sense and moved me into this lead position for the sole purpose of supervising the more hardware/network oriented guys working under me. They were supposed to do the grunt work and I was just supposed to manage it.
I'm inheriting one hell of a monster with our IT infrastructure. It's in bitter disrepair and a roll of the dice whether nothing will be working on any given day for any given reason. With a knew major software system being moved in by higher ups that don't realize that you can't plug&play major pieces of software, priority #1 on my list has become upgrading from NT4 to Active Directory. I asked my guys what was left to buy for the system. To my surprise, they said nothing. Apparently, the previous guy that left just after I was hired had purchased everything that was required for the upgrade in early 2007, but just never got around to putting it together. The hardware was purchased and is laying on the ground. The Server 2003 CDs are in the cabinet waiting to be installed. So, huzzah, Active Directory was project #1.
I'm having one of them write up an official project proposal with all the time requirements for each phase of implementation and all the other details for what's involved in getting it put together and done with correctly on the first try.
That's when he discovered the concept of a User CAL.
He's in the process of figuring out what CALs we have (Microsoft's eopen site says we have 50 "Server CALs" but gives us no more information). We've figured out that the consulting company we brought in a few months ago quoted us for the purchase of 100 more user CALs at $29 a pop.
So here I am in the same situation that got my predecessor demoted not more than a week ago. I quoted the owners the project at $0, just the time and effort put forth, because that's what my predecessor told me it was going to cost. Now we're looking at nearly $3000 minimum. Doesn't that situation sound familiar?
I'm done trusting that these guys can get me the numbers and requirements that this thing is going to take. It's not that they can't do it, it's just that I need this shit to be right the first time and they don't have the experience to know what it's going to take.
So if any of you with the experience of moving from NT4 to Active Directory to know what it takes, I'd love for you to share. I know we have two brand new servers just waiting to be used as the primary and secondary controllers. I know we have Server 2003, both a standard edition copy and an enterprise edition copy. I know we have 50 "Server CALs" but I'm not sure how those equate to User or Device CALs or even what those mean relative to each other or our situation.
TLDR: What does it take to move from NT4 to Active Directory? I need every last detail.
By trade, I'm not really a system admin kind of guy. I did programming in college and they moved me to data analysis when I started here about 8 months ago. The owners were impressed with my business sense and moved me into this lead position for the sole purpose of supervising the more hardware/network oriented guys working under me. They were supposed to do the grunt work and I was just supposed to manage it.
I'm inheriting one hell of a monster with our IT infrastructure. It's in bitter disrepair and a roll of the dice whether nothing will be working on any given day for any given reason. With a knew major software system being moved in by higher ups that don't realize that you can't plug&play major pieces of software, priority #1 on my list has become upgrading from NT4 to Active Directory. I asked my guys what was left to buy for the system. To my surprise, they said nothing. Apparently, the previous guy that left just after I was hired had purchased everything that was required for the upgrade in early 2007, but just never got around to putting it together. The hardware was purchased and is laying on the ground. The Server 2003 CDs are in the cabinet waiting to be installed. So, huzzah, Active Directory was project #1.
I'm having one of them write up an official project proposal with all the time requirements for each phase of implementation and all the other details for what's involved in getting it put together and done with correctly on the first try.
That's when he discovered the concept of a User CAL.
He's in the process of figuring out what CALs we have (Microsoft's eopen site says we have 50 "Server CALs" but gives us no more information). We've figured out that the consulting company we brought in a few months ago quoted us for the purchase of 100 more user CALs at $29 a pop.
So here I am in the same situation that got my predecessor demoted not more than a week ago. I quoted the owners the project at $0, just the time and effort put forth, because that's what my predecessor told me it was going to cost. Now we're looking at nearly $3000 minimum. Doesn't that situation sound familiar?
I'm done trusting that these guys can get me the numbers and requirements that this thing is going to take. It's not that they can't do it, it's just that I need this shit to be right the first time and they don't have the experience to know what it's going to take.
So if any of you with the experience of moving from NT4 to Active Directory to know what it takes, I'd love for you to share. I know we have two brand new servers just waiting to be used as the primary and secondary controllers. I know we have Server 2003, both a standard edition copy and an enterprise edition copy. I know we have 50 "Server CALs" but I'm not sure how those equate to User or Device CALs or even what those mean relative to each other or our situation.
TLDR: What does it take to move from NT4 to Active Directory? I need every last detail.
jotate on
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I know a little about licensing.
Windows 2K3 can be installed in "per server" mode and "per seat" mode. Now "per seat" mode plus those 50 CALs (you don't need to install anything to "get" the CALs, they're just licenses), means that 50 users can access your W2K3 AD. If you have more users than that, that need to have AD accounts, or use your W2K3 AD services then you need to buy more CALs. Does this migration include upgrading your email system (e.g. are you migrating from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2k3 or something,as Exchange CALs are a seperate thing)?
Not so much on your migration path.
When confronted with migrating from NT4 to W2K some years back I wussed out (granted I was a much greener systems jock). I just started a new Windows 2K AD domain plus Exchange 2K from scratch and used Outlook to individually export and import mailboxes. We didn't use the NT4 resource database for much so this was a viable option for us.
I'm confident these guys can handle the set up and swap. But they can't be figuring it out as they come to it. We need a price tag right now. I can't talk the owners into a $3000 ticket that used to be $0, only to turn around next week and ask for another chunk of change. I might as well as for my old job back immediately and hope they're feeling generous.
Read about cals here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_Access_License.
Even microsoft licensing has a hard time with figuring out their shit. How big is your company? If you're doing enterprise licensing (anything with software assurance), look into their true-up program. You can install whatever you needs, then at the end of the year you do a count of installed products and buy enough licenses to match.
That's some BS. Computer projects are rarely so easy to define and implement. 'hidden' costs are the norm. If you're worried about being demoted over $3k, I'd be putting my resume out there.