My company will soon be moving their headquarters to a brand new office location. The current office environment is setup with three DCs on Windows 2003 Servers. I will be able to access the new location and setup internet/firewall/etc. three weeks before the actual move of the servers. Thus I was planning to take one of the DC's (that doesn't have any FSMO roles, but is a DNS server) to the new location and do some testing with it. Then slowly move certain pieces of the network (my workstation, network printers, etc.) over to the new office and test the network. Other than reconfiguring VPN/Firewall/ and WAN info, is there any prep that needs to take place with the DC's or the Active Directory? Thank you very much for any input!

The only thing that comes to mind is that you'll want to make sure that your AD Sites and Services configuration is correctly configured once you move the DC. Otherwise, your authentication and replication traffic wont follow the physical layout of the network. Other than that AD is not really aware of the physical aspect of the network. If you have a firewall between the sites, you'll need to make sure that all of the appropriate ports are open. Network Port Requirements for Windows Systems http://www.anitkb.com/2010/09/network-port-requirements-for-windows_21.html Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Hi freshtracks, Thanks for posting here. Agree with JM, you should first create the new site and new IP subnet for your new location and move the domain controller to that place with following the introductions and steps in the link below: Managing Intersite Replication http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794799(WS.10).aspx Thanks. Tiger Li Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.