Merging AS servers

Ok,
The previous IT guys were not that good.

I have a collection of offices , each with their own AD server (win 2008 SP2)

names such as AD.local, Ad.hk01.business.com etc.
These are big businesses with significant number of users & file shares using the AD, scrap & re-implement is NOT an option.

Rename active MS AD servers is not an option, it is far too messy.

We have managed to get all these servers under the same FQDN root xxx.company.com or xxx.yyy.company.com, but the non-standard roots still remain & there is no forest server

The Plan
we plan to have a forest server as “org.company.com

with each office AD server under that:
US01.org.company.com
US02.org.company.com
HK02.org.company.com
CN01.org.company.com

to get all these AD servers merged we were planning.

  1. setup DUMMY master “company.com
  2. join all MS servers to that.
  3. bring in invention server “org.company.com
  4. bring in subtree UV servers. "US01-CN01
  5. use the “move” functionality to move all relevant users/ groups/settings from each of the old servers to this master & office slaves.
    (yes we know the client login will change, but user id’s will be preserved)
  6. delegate the “org.company.com” as the new master
  7. remove master “company.com

or is there an easier way?

You are describing a very complex scenario and the lack of other answers shows that the people who looked at this do either not understand your question or have no answer.
I can also not say if there is an easier way.

In these situations I always try to find a solution together with the Professional Services team at Univention.

Best Regards,
Dirk

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