We are in the process of retiring our 2003 Windows Server. It is currently running DNS, AD, Certificate Authority, DHCP, and Exchange 2003.
Our new server is a Virtual 2008 R2 64 bit. It is currently on the network but is only hosting NPS (IAS in 2003) Role.
I found some Microsoft articles that lay out the process for migration, but it says to migrate the ip address and server name to the new server. However one of the problems I see is that we do not want to move the server name to the new machine. Unfortunately the network was setup by someone else and he used names of rock bands for the servers. We really want to get away from this and use names that better describe what the server is for. So what would you suggest about migrating without changing the destination servers name?
Another question is will demoting the 2003 server while it is hosting Exchange 2003 cause a problem? We plan to move Exchange to a stand alone server in the future, and would like to upgrade to Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010. However I am not sure when the new server will be setup, so there could be a time period where the 2003 Server is still running after we move the DC responsibilities to the new server.
If anyone has been through this process I would like to know how your process went and any tips you can provide.
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