DHCPexim will export DHCP data for NT 4 and 2000 but will not import for 2003

I forgot about this one today when I was migrating a server from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003.

The current server handles DHCP, file services, and print services, and the main goal is to get everything moved while people work. Obviously, at some point there will have to be a cutover but I like to make things as transparent as possible with file server migration tools, print server migration tools, and DHCP migration tools. One of the sticking points is that this file server hosts most of the user profiles, so that makes it a little more cumbersome. Your best techs are the ones that have end users that are not aware that anything on the backend has changed.

Since I wanted some freedom of downing the old server when I needed to, I moved DHCP services to another server in the domain, running Windows 2003. I used the resource kit tool DHCPExim to export from 2000 and deactivate the DHCP scopes involved. I tried to import that data into the 2003 server but I should have remembered that the jet database/schema/file structures changed between 2000 and 2003.

Netsh to the rescue - a simple 'netsh dhcp dump >dhcpdump.txt' on the 2000 server gave me a usable configuration file to work from. I did a search and replace for the old and new IPs, saved the new file and then ran 'netsh exec dhcpdump.txt' on the 2003 box. Bam, DHCP has been migrated, except for the client database, so I made sure to set DHCP to do conflict detection under the 'Advanced' tab.

So far, so good (so what?).

Now back to robocopy'ing the file system structure...