samba - Oct 2011 - Samba4 replacing existing Win2003 AD/DC - possible?

Hi there

I am working on deploying Samba4 as domain controller and AD replacement in an
organisation. Yes, I know it is risky being in alpha, but we accept the risks.
Setting up a new domain and joining it from Windows clients works very well, but
that will require every client to join a new domain, and if that could be
avoided it would be great. I am thinking of instead let Samba4 join the existing
domain as a DC using the steps described in
http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO/Join_a_domain_as_a_DC
What I want to know, is whether or not it would be possible to then shutdown the
Windows 2003 server and let the new Samba4 be the only DC for the domain, so we
avoid creating a new domain for everyone to join, but simply moving everything
to a new server.

Does anybody know if this is even possible with Samba4?

Thanks in advance,

- Jeppe Larsen
isynet|net

On Thu, 2011-10-27 at 10:27 +0200, Jeppe Winther Larsen
wrote:
> Hi there
> 
> I am working on deploying Samba4 as domain controller and AD
> replacement in an organisation. Yes, I know it is risky being in
> alpha, but we accept the risks. Setting up a new domain and joining it
> from Windows clients works very well, but that will require every
> client to join a new domain, and if that could be avoided it would be
> great. I am thinking of instead let Samba4 join the existing domain as
> a DC using the steps described in
> http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO/Join_a_domain_as_a_DC
> What I want to know, is whether or not it would be possible to then
> shutdown the Windows 2003 server and let the new Samba4 be the only DC
> for the domain, so we avoid creating a new domain for everyone to
> join, but simply moving everything to a new server.
> 
> Does anybody know if this is even possible with Samba4?
Yes, this is exactly what Samba4 provides.  Simply move the FSMO roles
to Samba4 before you remove the Windows 2003 DC, and copy the sysvol
share manually (we do not yet sync files using FRS, but we are working
hard to get that working). 

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org