Basic preparations for the upgrade of servers in a Windows NT domain

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Basic preparations for the upgrade of servers in a Windows NT domain

There are a small number of basic preparations you must carry out to lay the groundwork for upgrading servers in a domain where all the domain controllers run Windows NT 4.0. For information about how these preparations fit into the overall process of the upgrade, see Upgrades in a Windows NT 4.0 Domain.

Important

• If you have servers or client computers that run Windows NT 3.51, it is recommended that you install or upgrade to a newer operating system on all these computers, or retire them from operation. If you have more than one domain, you must upgrade domain controllers running Windows NT 3.51 for reliable logon validation. In any case, upgrading or retiring computers running Windows NT 3.51 strengthens security and reduces the number of version differences between computers, simplifying management and troubleshooting.

• Compatibility check
  Check to see whether the applications and hardware on your systems are compatible with products in the Windows Server 2003 family, and then update or replace them as necessary. For important details about how to do this, see Hardware compatibility and Important files to review.

• Review partition sizes, especially on domain controllers
  Review the partitions on the servers to make sure there is plenty of free space available for the Windows Server 2003 family operating system to run. It is especially important to allow plenty of free space on domain controllers, because the existing user accounts database can expand by as much as a factor of ten when Active Directory functionality is added. For information about the disk requirements for the operating system, see Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition: System requirements.

• Review file systems on server partitions
  You must have at least one NTFS partition on domain controllers. It is recommended that you use NTFS on all partitions on all the servers in the domain, because any FAT or FAT32 partition lacks many security features. For example, on FAT or FAT32 partitions, a shared folder can be protected only by the permissions set on the shared folder, not on individual files, and there is no software protection against local access to the partition. For more information, see Reformatting or converting a partition to use NTFS and Convert.

• Service Pack
  Obtain Service Pack 5 or later, because it is necessary for the upgrade.

• Mirror sets or other disk sets
  If you used Windows NT 4.0 to create a volume set, mirror set, stripe set, or stripe set with parity, and you want to run Setup for Windows Server 2003 on that computer, you must prepare the disk set first. For details, see Working with volume, mirror, or stripe sets or stripe sets with parity.