Saturday, August 02, 2008

Virtual Migration Part 5 - Resource Remapping

The most crucial aspect of the migration is the Update process. This is how the new target SIDS are associated with the Source SIDS. This processes runs locally on each computer and may take any where from 2 minutes to 5 minutes for workstations and 4 minutes to 6 hours on servers. Because this process is multitasked the total time required is the time required to update the largest server and to locate all workstations. In order for the updater to successfully execute on the remote machine the computer must be online, reachable through DNS or WINS and the account used for the update must have administrative rights locally on the remote computer.

The Virtual Consultant will begin the update process and continue to update all workstations and servers until all computers have been updated using the report information gathered from the Directory Object Extractor Reports.

The Update process runs on the remote computer in the background without disruption to the logged on user. The process appends the target SID of the migrated object every where the source SID has rights or permissions. The Update process appends Local group membership, Share, Folder and File permissions, local profiles, mapped drives, connected printers and user rights.

Using the update method, two essential migration requirements are met. One the virtual consultant running the migration project knows exactly which user and computers are ready to be cut over to the target domain and most importantly the end user now has the exact same rights and permissions in the target domain as they had in the source domain including the same desktop and profile settings.

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