Creating a Rollback Plan

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Reduce the risk of disrupting end users in your organization by establishing a rollback plan. In general, it is possible to isolate and resolve any problems that occur during each phase of the migration. However, it is important to analyze potential risks and identify the levels of user impact and downtime that might necessitate rolling back the migration. You might be required to roll back your migration if any of the following occur:

  • Users cannot log on to their accounts after migration.

  • Users cannot access resources after migration.

  • User migration is incomplete; for example, passwords did not migrate.

  • User migration was successful, but user workstation migration or local profile translation failed.

If user impact or downtime reaches a level that you have defined as unacceptable in your organization, you can implement your rollback plan and continue to operate in your premigration environment. Because the source domain remains intact during an interforest restructure, you can restore the original environment by completing a few key steps.

To roll back to the premigration environment after migrating account objects:

  1. Enable the user accounts in the source domain (if you disabled the accounts during the migration process).

  2. Notify the users to log off of the target domain.

  3. Notify the users to log on to the source domain.

  4. Verify that users are able to access resources.

  5. Verify that the logon scripts and user profiles for users work as configured in the source domain.

The rollback process for resource objects is similar to that for account objects. To roll back to the premigration environment after migrating resource objects:

  1. Change the domain membership for the server or workstation to the source domain.

  2. Restart the server or workstation.

  3. Log on as a user and verify that you can access the resource.

Note

  • If you need to modify objects such as member servers or domain controllers in order to migrate them to the target domain, back up all the data before making the modifications and performing the migration.