Question : Active Directory domain and DNS question

Here's our situation.  We have an old experimental Windows Server 2003 Active Directory domain, we'll call "DOMAINOLD".  The first DC in the first site is the primary DNS server for our organization.  This domain was originally used for testing and as an introduction of AD to our organization which is still using Novell.  Now we would like to build a new production domain on the Server 2008 platform...for the sake of this question we'll call this domain "DOMAINNEW".  The question is probably simple for those with years of AD and integrated DNS experience with multiple domains:  How do we introduce this "DOMAINNEW" into our organization and seamlessly migrate the primary DNS server role from the first DC in the "DOMAINOLD" 2003 domain to the first DC in the "DOMAINNEW" 2008 domain?  Is it a matter of a simple domain zone transfer?  We'll eventually swap IP addresses around once we get this worked out so that the first 2008 DC has the same IP as the old first 2003 DC did...but the main thing is to get the DNS role moved with name resolution services remaining intact and minimal if any interruption to users.

Answer : Active Directory domain and DNS question

Hi,

Making a copy of a DNS zone in another DNS server is really easy. Just just have to create an secondary DNS zone on the new server with the same dns suffix and declare IP address of the DNS server that owns the zone (DNS server of DOMAINOLD in your case).
Add to that, don't forget to allow zone transfer with any address on the DOMAINOLD DNS zone on the "old" server.

As soon as the zone transfer is complete (check the content of the DNS zone to see if all the records are copied) you can then change the zone type on the new server and make it become a primary DNS zone.

So, you'll have a copy of the "DOMAINOLD" zone on your new DNS server. But I wonder what you want to do with this DNS zone on your new domain. The new domain won't have the same name I suppose.
If you're planning to finally have a new "DOMAINNEW" DNS zone that contains same records than the old "DOMAINOLD" DNS zone you won't reach this goal by this way.