Many companies have critical processes that have to be running all the time. There is no such thing as 24x7 in a migration.What happens if an unforeseen circumstance was to occur? Worst possible case scenario? Always have one or two back-up plans. Manage users and management's expectations.Īctually, if you have the available budget, you would be better off having a whole marketing campaign, advising users of the expected changes and benefits but also informing them of periods where they may not be able to work on a specific system.You will be surprised at the number of non-standard applications that suddenly appear and there may even be a few that will not migrate over, so you will need to check with vendors for upgrades or perhaps use some of Microsoft tools from the Microsoft Compatibility toolkit Spend a lot of time piloting and testing.Microsoft, Novell, Quest and Altiris all have a list of project plans that you can use as a template to help lay out a roadmap for your company's migration. I know this sounds obvious but depending on the size of your company your migration may take a week, or a year, and you will need to know at any point where in the migration you are. However, you are likely to be better off using tools from Quest ( or Altiris ( who also have white papers on migrating from Novell Netware to Microsoft Active Directory.įrom personal experience I'd like to offer a few extra tips when planning any migration, whether it is from Novell Netware to Microsoft Windows 2003 or any other operating system. The tools covered in the paper include the Microsoft Directory Synchronisation Services (MSDSS) for synchronising your Microsoft Windows 2003 Active Directory service with the Novell Directory service and their File Migration Utility (FMU).

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