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Active Directory on Win2k or 2k3?

Posted by Cliff on from the which-is-the-safer-option dept.

lordbry asks: "I am a Windows admin for a major university in a business computing area (if we have problems, people might not get paid). We have a Windows NT Domain, and are planning to migrate to Active Directory. One of my co-workers is pushing for doing this under Windows 2003. I, however, feel that (as with any M$ product) we should not even consider using 2003 for production anything until there is an SP 2 or 3, and that we should go with AD under Windows 2000. Does anyone have any advice, arguments, or horror stories that could help me make my case to the rest of my group, all of whom are somewhere in the middle? Does anyone think that 2003 is the way to go?"

2 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Don't believe the hype. by sethadam1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Windows 2003 is 1000 times better than 2000. It's signficantly more stable, it's got the fantastic volume shadow copy (kinda like CVS...kinda), it's got DFS, and it's extremely well supported.

    Don't think of it like a new Windows - it's actually Windows NT 5.2, which is heavily built upon 2000.

  2. Why not both? by packetknife · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In AD you don't have a PDC versus BDC concept. Just domain controllers. I'd consider investigating having a W2K and W2K3 server. In the past year I've worked with W2K3 quite a bit and I've had great as well as frightening experiences. In the past ~4 months or so the availability of good W2K3 documentation has increased significantly, the MS support too.

    I find W2K3 to be quicker and have more nifty options and features. It also depends on your client population, with XP being more easily manages under W2K3 with the stock GPO, copies, and templates provided.

    At the same time I've had problems with W2K3 as a DNS/WINS server. And a DFS server. It took a long time and lots of digging to resolve those issues and it looked like it was the first time MS had come across a lot of the issues we had when we got in touch with them. Eventually worked out but it's never fun to be the first to find a bug in a critical service.

    The other annoyance we've had with W2K3 is it's control over W2K clients. Things like IE settings that'd be pushed from our old domain controller or from IEAK stuff stopped working or worked oddly in W2K3. It would store security settings in two files, push only one, confuse clients, etc.

    If I had to do it all over again ~today~ I'd go W2K3 because I've found the past few months worth of documentaiton and support to be much better than a year ago.

    I should note that the first network I deployed W2K3 in was ~80 nodes. It was critical, 24 hour operation, Engineering intense, lots of storage, license servers, etc. So it wasn't trivial but it's not a University sized environment, not that many thousands of clients.

    In conclusion.. I don't have a conclusion. I think I'd have to hear what services besides AD you'd want to run off of it. Do you run DNS, DFS, SFU, Licenses, TS, etc. off of the same servers?

    Oh, if you do go W2K3, install the Resource Kit bundle right away, it's priceless for administration and scripting.

    Anyhow, good luck, Cheers, -Pk