Introduction
Introduction |
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The structure of this guide is designed to help organizations with varying needs easily find and focus on the content that is most relevant to their deployment goals.
This guide is structured so that you can approach the content in a variety of ways. You can proceed through the chapters in a linear fashion, beginning in Part 1 with a high-level overview of all deployment planning issues and processes. Then you can go on to the next phase, presented in Part 2, to learn about preparing your current network infrastructure to make the transition to Windows 2000 as smooth as possible. You can then proceed to either Active Directory™ planning, or go to Part 4, "Windows 2000 Upgrade and Installation," and learn step-by-step procedures for server installation. Or, you might go directly to Part 6, if client deployment is of initial interest to you. At the beginning of each part you will find an overview of the content.
You can gain the most from the chapters by reading them from beginning to end, and focusing on the chapter elements described as follows.
At the beginning of each chapter you will see "Chapter Goals." These goals identify the planning documents the chapter helps you to create. The chapters present recommendations and guidelines for gathering the information you need to create these planning documents.
The first part of each chapter also presents a task flowchart. These are the recommended primary tasks you should perform to create a plan or plans for a particular phase of your deployment, such as your plan for deploying the Active Directory directory service, or building a test lab. The content of the chapter is presented in the order of the tasks in the flowchart.
At some stages of your deployment planning, you will make critical decisions that will have significant consequences related to costs or time or both. Decisions made at these points can affect not only your Windows 2000 deployment but also future productivity for your organization and subsequently profitability. These decision points that could affect your "bottom line" are called out in various chapters.
Each chapter ends with a table listing the tasks described in the chapter. You can use this as checklist to be sure you have addressed all the important issues.
Many of the chapters also direct you to "Sample Planning Worksheets" in this book. You can use these to help you develop your planning documents, or you can use them as starting points to create your own forms. You will need some formalized way to gather and collate information for planning purposes.