ARCHIVED: Completed project: Active Directory refresh

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Primary UITS contact: Matt Martin

Completed: June 14, 2013

Description: Active Directory Services (ADS) is a collection of resources that includes, but is not limited to, user accounts, computer objects, and other Active Directory objects. It also provides account authentication services for services like IU CAS. The domain ads.iu.edu is the primary domain in the Indiana University Active Directory, driven by the Windows Server operating system.

The Messaging Team will be upgrading the hardware and software used to provide the Active Directory service.

Milestones and status:

  • February 3, 2013: Funding for 10 new domain controllers was approved.
  • February 20, 2013: Production hardware was ordered.
  • February 21, 2013: Internal test domain was upgraded.
  • February 25-March 1, 2013: Prepared network in the DC's racks
  • March 4, 2013: New 2012 domain controller was added to the primary test domain.
  • March 4-8, 2013: Began TestADS upgrade.
  • March 8, 2013: Project was announced to IT Professionals.
  • March 11-15, 2013: Week 1 of testing for TestADS; upgrade DC2 (March 13)
  • March 13, 2013: Second domain controller was updated to 2012 in the primary test domain.
  • March 18-22, 2013: Week 2 of testing for TestADS
  • March 25, 2013: Third domain controller was updated to 2012 in the primary test domain.
  • March 25-29, 2013: Waited for DC hardware/upgrade; TestADS DC1 (March 25); raised domain level (March 27)
  • March 27, 2013: The domain and forest functional level on testads.iu.edu have been upgraded to Windows 2012.
  • April 1-12, 2013: Installed domain controller hardware; TestADS has been cleaned up and finalized.
  • April 15, 2013: Ran ForestPrep and DomainPrep
  • April 16, 2013: Installed new domain controller iu-mssg-adsdc10
  • April 18, 2013: Installed new domain controller iu-mssg-adsdc09
  • April 23, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc08 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • April 25, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc07 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • April 30, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc06 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • May 2, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc03 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • May 6-10, 2013: Active Directory change freeze
  • May 14, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc05 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • May 16, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc02 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • May 21, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc04 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • May 23, 2013: Demoted iu-mssg-adsdc01 and rebuilt on new hardware
  • May 27-31, 2013: Clean up and finalize
  • June 3-7, 2013: Clean up and finalize
  • June 10, 2013: The domain and forest functional level on ads.iu.edu was upgraded to Windows 2012.

Further information:

Comment process: Send email to T2 Help.

Benefits: ADS is an extremely I/O- and CPU-intensive environment requiring high-performance hardware. Upgrading to faster, eight-core CPUs and solid state drives and adding servers will provide the necessary resources to meet current demands and allow growth for the future. The proposed solution will more than double the number of CPU cores (each with increased clock speed), improve I/O operations by using solid state drives and larger controller cache, and add memory for growth of the directory.

Project team:

  • Matt Martin, Messaging Services, Tech Lead
  • Abhi Jalan, Messaging Services, Tech
  • Shawn Vest, Messaging Services, Tech
  • Joe Potchanant, T2 Support Center
  • Kevin Moore, T2 Support Center
  • Sheryl Swinson, IT Community Partnerships

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Last modified on 2018-01-18 17:23:45.