Overview of Windows 2000 Project
Joan McLean gave a recap of the Windows 2000 project; when it started, the subcommittees that were formed, development of the infrastructure model and the administrative model, implementation of the production model, implementation of the development environment, implementation of the QA environment and East and West domain implementation.
Student Domain
Future Implementations
Services Offered by IT
ASU West Domain Review
Joan McLean presented an overview on the West Windows 2000 environment. West uses Microsoft DNS/DHCP instead of NetID DNS/DHCP. Their accounts in the main West domain are integrated and synchronized with the current AP process. The West Student domain contains student accounts only.
West performs various administration delegation within their campus environment. They also have a service level agreement that defines what the units can do in their OU's. They require a department head agreement to acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages of what can happen to their unit through the administration of the OU.
Group policy usage includes DNS suffix change, account lockout policies, audit policies and log settings at the domain level and classroom instructor station logon scripts at the OU level.
ASU East Domain Review
Bert Valenzuela presented an overview of the East Windows 2000 environment. Currently they have setup an administrative environment and an academic environment that supports the sites at East. They are not using accounts from ASURITE for the sites, but rather use generic accounts for the student sites.
President's Office/General Counsel OU
Tom Merriam gave an overview of the process of migrating the President's Office and General Counsel environment to Windows 2000 as a member server within the ASURITE domain. The environment was fairly easy to migrate as there were no group policies or login scripts to deal with. Also, both the old and the new server were on the network, so the transfer of files was easy to do. Each workstation was added, service packs updated, etc. at the time of file movement to the new server. In order to preserve the look of the desktop for the user, he maintained a copy of the current user.dat file so this can be copied to the new user profile. Mentioned that in order to publish printers in the Active Directory, you must have the "List in Directory" box checked AND the fully qualified domain name must be the same name as the DNS entry name for the server.
VPRC Environment Upgrade
Troy Sturgill gave an overview of how VPRC is proceeding with migrating their Windows NT 4.0 environment over to Windows 2000. A one way trust was setup with the current ASURITE domain to setup groups with user ASURITE accounts in and to have users start using their ASURITE accounts for login within the existing domain. All of the member servers were upgraded to Windows 2000 with the domain controllers being the last to be upgraded. The servers are currently in a Windows NT 4.0 domain.
VPRC uses a Remote Installation Server (RIS) to load workstations. This server has been brought into the current ASURITE environment. All of the workstations in their area have Windows 2000 Professional installed on them. Russ wrote a Visual Basic frontend to the NETDOM utility which allows those adding the computers to the Windows 2000 to use a GUI interface to enter the computer name, etc.
Multiple OU's have been established based on departments within the VPRC area. Computers for each department are placed in the respective OU computer container. Group policies are also being applied based on departmental OU membership.
The final step of their migration is to move their printers and file and print servers from Windows NT 4.0 over to Windows 2000.
Using the Development Environment
Russ "confessed" to why you should use the development environment before doing anything in the production environment. As a result of some of the things they did, some of the experiences they had by shooting themselves in the foot, they realized the critical importance of make sure things work in development. Some things to beware of when testing:
Become familiar with Windows 2000 environment
Russ stressed that it's important to keep a an environment setup in the development environment so that changes to your own environment can be tested out and verified in this environment before moving it into production.
He also mentioned the resources available to those wanting to get into testing.
DL.PROJ.Windows2000.Questions (Windows2000-Q)
Listserv (in the process of being created)
Miscellaneous
Robin announced that she will be scheduling a meeting for lab administrators to discuss issues that are relative to those environments. See Robin if you want to participate in this group.
Next Meeting
The next meeting will feature tools and tips that the group wants to present. Russ will be contacting people to participate in this meeting. The meeting will be held on April 4, 2002.
Windows Networking User Group