What is Active Directory Migration?

Often IT migration is essentially an upgrade - a transition to a newer version of a product. For example, perhaps you've migrated your home PC from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, or updated your favorite apps to the latest version.

Active Directory migration is a different and more complex undertaking with many steps. Despite the complexity, it's important to perform an AD migration for the same reasons you upgrade your own OS and applications: to get new features, and because Microsoft, like every other vendor, eventually stops supporting older versions of products. leaving organizations running legacy software at increased risk.

To understand why AD migration is more complex than other software or hardware upgrades, it is important to understand that Active Directory is not a standalone product. Most likely, its main service, AD DS, is included with the Windows Server operating system. This way you are not migrating AD directly; rather, when you upgrade Window Server on your domain controllers, you are migrating Active Directory.

Active Directory is a complex ecosystem. Thousands or even hundreds of thousands of objects, each with their own attributes. Group policies, AD security groups - all this leads to the fact that AD migration becomes a project that requires a high level of expertise. That is why the best solution would be to entrust the transfer to specialists such as Fanetech.

What is AD consolidation and restructuring?

When you set up your Active Directory, you made several important decisions about its structure. Some of them, like what security groups you should have, are fairly easy to change as your business requirements evolve, but others—like what domains you have, the domain names you use, and what your directory scheme looks like— are harder to change because they affect the very foundation of your directory. Instead, you need to carefully plan your changes and implement them as part of a consolidation or restructuring project.

What is included in an AD migration project?

Completing an Active Directory migration correctly and on time is essential for user productivity, business continuity, and security, but migration is a notoriously complex project. The first step is careful planning: you need to know exactly what Point A (your current environment) and Point B (desired environment) look like, lay out your procedures for achieving that goal, and test your plan thoroughly to eliminate any problems or omissions.

Next, you need to clean up your current environment as much as possible by setting permissions correctly, deleting inactive accounts, and so on. You also need to identify planning and priority constraints and gain buy-in from all stakeholders. And you should also make sure you have an up-to-date backup, rollback capability, and recovery plan in case you run into problems during the migration process.

Only then can you begin the real migration steps. If possible, start with a staging environment and then move on to pilot tests in a production environment. Because migration takes time, make sure you have a coexistence strategy that allows users to remain productive regardless of which accounts and resources migrate and which don't.

Organizations decide to migrate Active Directory for a variety of reasons. Organizational growth may require Active Directory restructuring. Major business changes such as a merger, acquisition, or divestiture are also common reasons for Active Directory consolidation or restructuring.

How do AD migration, consolidation, and restructuring work together?

All types of Active Directory migrations move from Point A to Point B. It's a lot of work, so it makes sense to plan ahead for the Point B you really want by combining Active Directory migration, consolidation, and restructuring efforts into a single project.

In other words, if you want to get the new features offered by the latest version of Windows Server, it's smart to take the opportunity to clean up, consolidate, and restructure your AD as well. Likewise, if you are making efforts to consolidate or restructure your Active Directory, you can also upgrade to the latest version of Windows Server and reap all the benefits that come with it.

Conclusion

Choosing an experienced partner can greatly simplify the work and minimize the risks associated with your AD migration, consolidation, or restructuring project.

Fanetech Help you develop a comprehensive plan and successfully execute an Active Directory migration, consolidation, and restructuring project—on time and on budget, while ensuring secure user access to workstations, resources, and email throughout the project.