Recipe 2.11 Determining if ADPrep Has Completed

2.11.1 Problem

You want to determine if the ADPrep process, described in Recipe 2.10, has successfully prepared a Windows 2000 domain or forest for Windows Server 2003. After ADPrep has completed, you will them be ready to start promoting Windows Server 2003 domain controllers.

2.11.2 Solution

To determine if adprep /domainprep completed, check for the existence of the following object where <DomainDN> is the distinguished name of the domain:

cn=Windows2003Update,cn=DomainUpdates,cn=System,<DomainDN>

To determine if adprep /forestprep completed, check for the existence of the following object where <ForestRootDN> is the distinguished name of the forest root domain:

cn=Windows2003Update,cn=ForestUpdates,cn=Configuration,<ForestRootDN>

2.11.3 Discussion

As described in Recipe 2.10, the adprep utility is used to prepare a Windows 2000 forest for the upgrade to Windows Server 2003. One of the nice features of adprep is it stores its progress in Active Directory. For /domainprep, a container with a distinguished name of cn=DomainUpdates,cn=System,<DomainDN> is created that has child object containers cn=Operations and cn=Windows2003Update. After adprep completes a task, such as extending the schema, it creates an object under the cn=Operations container to signify its completion. Each object has a GUID for its name, which represents some internal operation for adprep. For /domainprep, 52 of these objects are created. After all of the operations have completed successfully, the cn=Windows2003Update object is created to indicate /domainprep has completed.Figure 2-2 shows an example of the container structure created by /domainprep.

Figure 2-2. DomainPrep containers

For /forestprep, a container with the distinguished name of cn=ForestUpdates,cn=Configuration,<ForestRootDN>, is created with child object containers cn=Operations and cn=Windows2003Update. The same principles apply as for /domainprep except that there are 36 operation objects stored within the cn=Operations container. After /forestprep completes, the cn=Windows2003Update object will be created that marks the successful completion of /forestprep. Figure 2-3 shows an example of the container structure created by /forestprep.

Figure 2-3. ForestPrep containers

2.11.4 See Also

Chapter 14 of Active Directory, Second Edition for upgrading to Windows Server 2003, and Recipe 2.10 for running adprep