Performing a Migration

The following guide will help you to complete a migration with Alter-Ego.

Determine the Type of Migration

Alter-Ego is highly configurable to support many different domain and local migration types. To accomodate this wide variety of configurations, authentication scenarios are used to ensure the correct accounts are assigned to the required authentication roles. Begin by determining which kind of authentication scenario will be used based on the type of migration you will perform.

If you are simply changing the domain membership (domain-to-workgroup, workgroup-to-domain) of a number of clients, you will use the Domain Change Only authentication scenario. If you wish to migrate profiles from one user to another without changing the domain or workgroup membership of the client workstations, you will need to review the Profile Migration Only authentication scenarios to determine the appropriate scenario for your migration. If you wish to move the workstations from one domain or workgroup to another and migrate user profiles together, review the Domain Change and Profile Migration scenarios and choose the one which best suits your environment.

In some cases more than one authentication scenario may apply to the clients which will be migrated. In this case, take note of all of the authentication scenarios that you will require. The scenario which applies to most clients will be used for the basic configuration.

You may also find that one of these "Common Migration" step-by-step topics will assist you with a simple migration:

Preparation

Begin by reading the Alter-Ego Concepts and Alter-Ego Best Practices documents.

To ensure success, complete the following client preparation checklist:

Client PCs must be running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional desktop operating systems.
You must have administrative access to all clients through one or more domain or local accounts.
Client PCs must be connected to a TCP/IP-based network and reachable from the console. If a firewall separates the console and the clients, a fixed port can be assigned through the configuration dialog. If the firewall is NATing the console's IP address, a public IP address can also be set.
Client PCs must have at least one network share which can be opened from the console PC. ADMIN$ is used by default, but this can be changed through the configuration dialog. On XP systems Simple File Sharing must be disabled and the XP firewall must be configured with an exception for File and Print Sharing to allow Alter-Ego to copy files and install services on the client PCs.
The console must be able to resolve all client computers' IP addresses by computer name or host name. When joining a domain, DNS name resolution is important (see below), therefore you may wish to use host names (especially for multi-subnet migrations as name resolution through network broadcasting may not be an option) however fully-qualified domain names are not supported, so if using DNS name resolution, you must be able to resolve the client by host name only.
These additional considerations apply only if performing a domain join:
- If your clients are running the Windows XP firewall, firewall configuration changes to the destination domain Group Policies may be required. Please be sure to read this important note on the XP firewall and Group Policy.
- Clients must be configured to use DNS servers which can resolve the destination Active Directory's resource records before the migration. This is necessary to resolve user SIDs, to complete the domain join, and to login to the new domain after the domain join.

To facilitate the population of the console tree, computers and/or users can be imported from Active Directory or imported from file. If importing a number of computers and users, preparing an import file in advance may speed up the process significantly.

To prepare the migration:

Alter-Ego does not create user accounts, though it will create computer accounts during a domain migration. All computer accounts are created in the default Computers OU. Any destination user accounts -- local or domain -- for profile migrations must exist before running a migration. This can be done using utilities like ADDUSERS.EXE, LDIFDE.EXE and the NET USER command.
Click Tools -> Configuration... and verify the configuration options, particularly the Listener IP if your system has more than one network interface.
If you are using a software firewall, such as the built in Windows XP firewall, on the console PC, you must ensure that Alter-Ego is allowed to accept communications from the network. The easiest way to do this is to perform a network test. The software firewall will recognize the attempt to contact the console application and, depending on your configuration, may prompt you to allow access for the program. If you are not prompted, you will have to manually configure an exception.
Click Tools -> Configuration... and verify the configuration options, particularly the Listener IP and Listener Port.
Run the Easy Setup Wizard to build the migration:
- Answer the wizard's questions to set the global settings on the inheritance tree. If you have a complex migration involving numerous authentication scenarios or migration types, use the scenario which applies to the majority of the computers to be migrated to complete the wizard, or perform each scenario as a separate migration.
- As part of the Easy Setup Wizard, import computers and users if applicable, from a file or existing Active Directory tree. If you do not have an import source, computers and groups can be created manually.
- The final part of the Easy Setup Wizard prompts you to complete the Authentication Wizard for your migration scenario. Again, for complex scenarios, set the options for the scenario which applies to the majority of the clients in the migration or run each scenario as a separate migration.
- Once the tree is populated, create any groups necessary to refine the settings or organize the computers as you desire.
Save your settings.

Begin the migration by clicking Tools -> Start Migration in the menu or pressing the F9 key. You will be prompted to confirm the Listener IP address and Listener Port for network communications.

As the migration progresses, events will be logged in the progress log pane on the right while each computer in the status tree will change colors as its current status changes:

A black computer has not been processed.
A grey computer is processing a console action: loading, unloading, or aborting client services.
A blue computer is running the client migration services.
An orange computer is abort-pending.
A green computer has successfully completed the migration.
A yellow computer has completed the migration with warnings or was canceled.
A red computer has has completed the migration with errors or was aborted.

Computers which are migrated to a new domain will all be placed in the default Computers OU.

When the migration has completed and all clients have reported in, a message will appear indicating that the preview pane and logs should be reviewed for errors. Detailed logs can be found in the Log Path and Log Collect Path. The Log Path will contain the Handler and Transferor logs which provide a detailed list of events performed by the Handler and each Transferor thread during the migration. The Log Collect Path should contain a log file downloaded from each of the clients.

When you have finished reviewing the logs, click the Done button to return the main console to normal mode.

Your migration is now complete! You may wish to re-run part of the migration for any clients which did not successfully complete (after making any necessary changes), or begin the next phase of a multi-step migration.

If you encounter any issues during the course of your migration, you are encouraged to contact Winterfrost Support or visit the Winterfrost Community forums for assistance.

Thank you for using Alter-Ego!