Summary

There are two paths for migrating from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003. One is the easy path; the other is the hard path. In the end, the results are the same, so the easy path is recommended. By simply preparing for the migration from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 and creating a fallback plan as a safety net, the administrators of the network can perform an in-place upgrade to Windows 2003 Active Directory relatively quickly.

Part of the insider solutions in the migration process involves pretesting and validating to minimize the risk of failure during the migration process. For organizations that want to prototype, test, and validate the migration process, there are several steps available. This includes doing hardware and software compatibility testing, preinstallation migration testing, and network validation testing prior to the migration process.

If successful, the actual migration process in a production environment only takes a couple hours one evening or weekend . After the migration process has been completed, the clean-up of Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0 objects will finalize the migration steps, and get the organization into a native Windows 2003 Active Directory configuration.