WNT Mag UPDATE - Special Edition by Mark Minasi, January
Konstantin Gusev
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WINDOWS NT MAGAZINE UPDATE - SPECIAL EDITION BY MARK MINASI
Mark Minasi, contributing editor for Windows 2000 Magazine, provides
insights and analysis on today's hot NT trends.
http://www.winntmag.com/update
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This UPDATE Special Edition is sponsored by
PROGNOSIS NT
http://www.ir.com/prognosis_nt.asp
FASTLANE - WINDOWS 2000 DEPLOYMENT WORKSHOP
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January 28, 2000 - In this special issue, Mark Minasi gives his reasons
why you should migrate your desktops to Windows 2000 first.
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Want to sponsor UPDATE? Contact Vicki Peterson (Western and
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Manager) at 877-217-1823 or ttat...@winntmag.com.
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A Risk-Managed Approach To Implementing Windows 2000
Some time in the next month, Windows 2000 (Win2K) will become a shrink-
wrapped reality. No more betas, no more release candidates (RCs), and
no more guesses about whether it'll ship in a particular quarter. As
you might recall, Bill Gates said in mid-1999 that Win2K would ship in
one of the final quarters of 1999. It now looks as if Win2K will appear
in its final form in 1999--so long as it's the fifth quarter! When
Win2K is finally available, you'll probably have to make the decision--
you know, the scary decision. The one that will either make you a hero
or a zero: The "When shall we implement Win2K?" decision.
There's no safe answer to when to implement Win2K. Despite the
fact that I've been working with Win2K daily for almost 2 years,
I can't hazard a completely certain guess about how reliable the
OS will turn out to be. Sure, I (and several hundred thousand
other beta testers) have been poking and prodding Win2K for some
time, but you can't perform certain types of stress testing with
a beta. In the final analysis, we won't know how good Win2K is
until about 6 months after its release. But we'll see plenty of
advertising touting the benefits of Microsoft's latest server OS,
and your boss will be among those seeing that advertising, so
you'll get the "when" question--and probably pretty soon.
In the January issue of Windows NT Magazine (now Windows 2000
Magazine), Group Publisher Mark Smith recommends that you migrate
your servers first. (You can read the article at
http://win2000mag.com/Articles/Content/7755_01.html.) Although
Mark's ideas are always insightful and well-informed, I'll
present a somewhat contrary approach. I'd implement Win2K on your
systems in three steps--workstations, then member servers, then
domain controllers. Here's my reasoning.
Windows 2000 Professional (Win2K Pro) is an almost unalloyed
win for business desktops. I'm oversimplifying, but in many ways,
Win2K Pro is a combination of the best of NT and Windows 98--NT's
traditional strengths, security, and reliability combined with
the simplicity of Win98's Plug and Play (PnP) hardware support.
The Offline Files feature makes networks seem faster and more
reliable. Win2K's better support of hardware means that you can
unify the OS on both laptops and desktops, simplifying things for
the many businesses that have put NT on the desktop and Win9x on
the laptop. This path is not all wine and roses, of course; some
Win9x-compatible devices won't work under Win2K, but they're
mostly things such as Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG)
decoder boards, Universal Serial Bus (USB) modems, and IEEE 1394
adapters--important in certain niches but not really mainstream.
Rolling out Win2K Pro first has another benefit: It'll get you
used to the newer Win2K interface. Although Win2K's desktop is
very similar to NT 4.0 and Win9x desktops, some changes will take
a bit of getting used to, particularly on the administrative
side. For example, the Manage Computer snap-in is a completely
new arrangement of many basic administrative tools. That same
arrangement carries over to the server versions of Win2K, so
becoming comfortable with Win2K Pro takes you a long way toward
becoming comfortable with Windows 2000 Server (Win2K Server). One
caution, however: As always, before changing a desktop OS, do
your homework and double and triple check the applications that
the users rely on to be sure that the application can run atop
Win2K. Most 32-bit commercial applications will present no
problem. My concern is about older, homegrown applications. Find
them and check them before upgrading a user's computer to an OS
that won't run a vital application.
After you've rolled out the workstations and you're
comfortable with the new desktop, upgrade the member servers.
Win2K servers are perfectly happy acting as members of an NT 4.0-
based domain. The file servers, the print servers, and the Web
servers will all upgrade nicely, and, if you find that you run
into some problem with Win2K, you can reinstall NT 4.0 on any of
the servers without having to rebuild the domain structure. In
short, you're upgrading some servers to Win2K and getting more
Win2K experience, without risking your domain controllers in the
process.
By the time you've upgraded the workstations and member
servers and gained a measure of confidence in Win2K, we'll know
more about how well Win2K is doing now that the OS is out of the
laboratory and in the wild. Early adopters will have given the
yea or nay to its Active Directory (AD) structure and, on the
basis of that information, you might decide that it's time to
take the plunge and move your directory structure from NT 4.0
domain controllers to AD domain controllers. For safety's sake,
however, it might be a good idea to refrain from upgrading one of
your already-working NT 4.0 domain controllers. In fact, turn the
NT domain controller off so that the traffic the new Win2K-based
domain creates doesn't affect the NT domain controller's SAM.
Then, if the AD-based domain turns out to be a bust, you can turn
off the AD domain controllers, power up the old NT 4.0 domain
controller, and promote it to a PDC. You've now reactivated your
NT 4.0-based domain.
Some of you will need to move to Win2K, domain controllers and
all, as soon as possible because of the nature of your work. In
particular, I'm thinking of IT consultants and consultancies. For
those of you in that position, any costs you incur as you take
the time to experiment, fail, and eventually succeed with Win2K
will be more than repaid by the value of the advice that you'll
be able to peddle to your clients. Should the rest of you work
hard to get Win2K running early? To answer that question, ask
yourself, "Will it provide a competitive advantage in your
industry, a market edge over your competition?" For the firms for
which IT is their reason for existence, the answer is yes, and
early implementation is a good idea. For others, a slower
approach might make more sense. In other words, if you're EDS,
you need to work with and know Win2K now. But if you're Ford
Motor Company, I think it's safe to wait a few months (or a
couple of service packs--SPs) before going gung-ho on Win2K.
No matter what path you're currently considering, we have only
a few weeks before Win2K and its inevitable marketing storm
descends upon us. Best of luck to us all!
Mark Minasi
Contributing Editor, Windows NT Magazine
he...@minasi.com
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WINDOWS NT MAGAZINE UPDATE SPECIAL EDITION STAFF
Contributing Editor - Mark Minasi (he...@minasi.com)
Ad Sales Manager (Western and International) - Vicki Peterson
(vpet...@winntmag.com)
Ad Sales Manager (Eastern) - Tanya T. TateWik (ttat...@winntmag.com)
Editor - Gayle Rodcay (ga...@winntmag.com)
Copy Editor - Judy Drennen (jdre...@winntmag.com)
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