Move entire domain to new IP range.

[PJK]

I currently work in a Windows 2000 environment and we are running out of IP's. We since have been assigned a new range.

Our current environment is both DHCP and static, about 50/50 i'd say.

What is the best way to transfer the entire active directory to the new range with the least amount of work?

Any help is much appreciated.

[confus-ed]

...What is the best way to transfer the entire active directory to the new range with the least amount of work?...

The 'least work' would be to use a superscope & keep your existing clients on their 'old' ips then add new ones in the extended scope - however in the long run it might be a darn sight more work ... its tricky to say without knowing why you have so many static ips & DHCP as well - there must be a resaon !?! - as usual more detail will help us make a 'more informed' guess

[Kymera]

I can't really test this, but According to MS this is the way to change from Static to DHCP remotely and then change your DHCP scope.

If you need to keep the static users static I guess I would use a batch file to change the registry settings to the new IP. You can find the IPAddress value at the following key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\[Network Device]\Parameters\Tcpip. The bad news is that the IPAddress data is a binary value.
This isn't a bunch of work if you already have a list of computers in your domain. You could easily do the calculations and using an NT reskit utility (reg.exe or regupdate.exe, I can never remember these things) update the necessary computers from your workstation using a batch file, then just have the users reboot.

[silencio]

Depending on the actual size of your environment I'd say incrementally drop your lease time down to 24 hours, add another zero to the subnet mask of your network and roll it out to the entire infrastructure over the weekend. An IP change is pretty straigh forward when you use private IPs on the internal network and map/nat everything at the firewall. When you upgrade the internal you've got a lot more to consider.

How large is the network? How is it layed out?

[PJK]

Thankx confus-ed, Kymera and silencio for your ideas on my problem.

I'll explain a bit more.

Even though I have a 50/50 mix of DHCP and static addresses, I would preferably like all machines on DHCP and Kymer's answer is very interesting, I'll let you know how I get on.

This will affect about 300 computers. All our machines have a 141.97.x.x address with a subnet of 255.255.252.0 which I need to change to a 10.144.x.x address subnet 255.255.240.0 . I have no NAT on this network so I don't think that silencio's idea will work.

I have set one pc on the new address and subnet just to see if it works and I have given all our servers an additional IP on the new network. The test pc sees everything on the old network but won't let me change the name of the machine. It gives an RPC error. And DNS won't register the test machine, so I can't ping the computer name, but I can ping the new IP address.

Hope this helps.

[Kymera]

Is your DNS on the same segment as the machine you're testing? If it isn't you may want to check the equipment you have better the two networks. My first thought was that an access list may be allowing computers with certain IPs to talk to the DNS, that's why you can ping the test pc by IP, but not by name. That's assuming the pc is configured properly, which I am.

[peterpam]

your dns dindt worked with your machine. That cann bee because he still had an host (or maybee service) record in his database with the name of your test machine with an other IP; or because you just didnt gave time to it (ipconfig /registerdns), or because DNS is't allowing it because your machine is on another domain (or not properly registered in a DC) or he isn't configured to allow dinamic updates... or all the reasons others pointed behind me.

About your change, in your case, nothing simplier than to create a new scope in DHCP with the new IP adressing scheme, and use thouse usefull batch files that you can find at microsoft msdn to change the IP from static to dinamic on the machines you need. Im sure there was a simple VB script conceived to it in microsoft scripting site.

After you made it, just reduce the lease time (come hours) of the older scope , and after the machines have all renewed their IP, cut it.
The machines will get the new IP, and with it the new IP's of DNS, Default Gateway, Wins, etc...

You can then change DNS IP, etc

hope i was usefull

[PJK]

I have tried, with success, the remote changing of static IP's to DHCP. The only thing is that the DNS is cannot be changed from static to DHCP remotely.

I have tried to search the registry for anything to do with DNS but I cannot find where micros$ft have stored it.

Any ideas.

[peterpam]

if i understand correctely, you wont to change de IP of the DNS server to dynamic (DHCP)? That cant bee done. DNS server should always have static IP. And thats logic, because you can then configure the DHCP to configure in all his clients the correct DNS IP.