cold cloning windows 2000 AD

[CEC]

Thanks for your all.

Anyone can share some experiences on cold clon a windows 2000 AD to VM?

Any special step that I need to follow?

Any checklist that I can make sure the cloning process is successful?

Thanks

Patrick

[esiebert7625]

I think you'll find the general consensus here is don't do it if it's a production server and a DC that has replication partners. You potentially corrupt AD by doing this. It's better to make a new server, dcpromo it and move any FSMO roles to it then shutdown the old one. You can also just dcpromo the original to a member server, migrate it then dcpromo it back in the domain. You may not run into problems cold-cloning it, but if you do AD problems are never fun to resolve. If you must clone it then cold-cloning is the way to go over hot-cloning.

If you find this post helpful, please award points by clicking the Helpful/Correct buttons...thanks

See these links...

Virutalization of Active Directory - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=352424&#352424

Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

Virtualizing a Windows Active Directory Domain Infrastructure - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9710.pdf

How to detect and recover from a USN rollback in Windows 2003 Server: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885875/

How to detect and recover from a USN rollback in Windows 2000 Server: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875495/

P2Ving Domain Controllers - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=390630

[CEC]

Thanks for your infor.

I'll study it more before process.

Thanks again

Patrick

[Sif]

I tried cold clone for my DC and because the syst partition was setup on part 2, I was not able to do a cold convert with the bootCD. The converter when I used my BootCD didn't be able to localize OS.

So, I use hot cloning in safe mode (DS Mode) and I close many service before cloning. It was succeed. The only details, I must transfert manually the content of folder Sysvol (scripts and policies). After that, I boot my new VM many time in DSMode and I ajust something else with windows event log errors and warnings messages. Finally, I reboot normally and It was good.

Good lucks for yours

Marc L