Migration

Windows NT Server includes several tools that can help you migrate your Lan Manager or Novell NetWare servers to Windows NT Servers. These tools include the ability to migrate user accounts and groups, and, in the case of Lan Manager, user shares. In this section, we will look at some of the issues and methodologies involved in migrating your servers. We will also take a look at what additional tools Microsoft makes available to help in the migration issue for Novell NetWare.

Lan Manager

Since Microsoft replaced Lan Manager with Windows NT Server 3.1, support for upgrading Lan Manager to Windows NT Server has been dwindling. In fact, support to upgrade from Lan Manager has been removed from version 4.0 of Windows NT Server. The tools are still available with version 3.51 or earlier, however. The basic Lan Manager upgrade can take two forms. First, you can install Windows NT Server 3.51, or earlier, on the computer running Lan Manager, if the hardware will support Windows NT Server. Or, you can clone an existing Lan Manager server. When we talk about cloning here, we are really talking about copying the user account information and directories from the Lan Manager to a fresh Windows NT Server installation. My recommendation is that you always clone the server. The reason behind that is the upgrade process is a one-way process, and if it should fail, the downtime could cost you your job. On the other hand, if the cloning process fails, your original Lan Manager server is still available.

Lan Manager for Unix is not a supported upgrade or cloning platform. However, if you install a Microsoft Lan Manager 1.x server to your Lan Manager for Unix domain and make it a server, that computer can be used to migrate the user accounts. Once this migration has occurred, you may then copy the user directories from the Lan Manager for Unix servers to your new Windows NT Server and, in effect, clone that system.

The basic process occurs as shown in the following steps:

1.  Install Windows NT Server 3.x on the platform of your choice.

2.  Change to the UPGRADE.LM2 directory on your installation CD-ROM.

3.  For a clone on an MIPS computer, change to the MIPS subdirectory. For an Alpha, change to the ALPHA subdirectory. For an Intel processor, change to the X86 subdirectory.

4.  Run the SETUP.CMD batch file. It takes one parameter—a drive letter indicating where to install the upgrade files. It will store these files in an UPGRADE subdirectory on the specified drive.

5.  Run LMUPMGR.EXE on your Lan Manager server. This is a graphical shell that runs other Lan Manager utilities and captures the requisite information.

6.  Run WNTUPMGR.EXE on your Windows NT Server. This graphical shell will restore the information captured on the Lan Manager server to your Windows NT Server.

7.  Upgrade your Windows NT Server 3.x to Windows NT Server 4.0 as previously described in this chapter.

Novell NetWare

Novell NetWare migration is similar to the Lan Manager cloning process. It can be used to capture user accounts, directories, and file information. Once this information has been captured, you can move the data files from your Novell server, but your clients will need to have changes made to their network protocols in order to function with Windows NT Server. As Microsoft has released the Directory Service Manager for Net W are and File and Print Service for Net W are, you can use these add-on components to slowly migrate your network clients. This means you can interoperate with Novell server and integrate your current network clients without reconfiguring your network client protocols. As it currently stands, the migration process is as follows:

1.  Install Windows NT Server on the platform of your choice.

2.  Install and configure the Gateway Services for NetWare on your Windows NT Server.

3.  Run the NWCONV.EXE program located in your SystemRoot\System32 directory.

4.  Select your NetWare and Windows NT Servers for the migration.

5.  Begin the migration process.

6.  Check for possible errors.

Summary

This chapter includes information and a step-by-step guide to the basic installation process. In this chapter, we looked at the various installation methods. By now, you should be familiar with the various installation options and be prepared for your own Windows NT installation. We’ve taken a brief look at some of the troubleshooting errors and reviewed the migration process for Lan Manager and Novell NetWare.