Cup.edu to Calu.edu Domain Project

Hi all,

One of the final steps in retiring the cup.edu name is to move all accounts, computers and email from the cup.edu Active Directory domain to a Calu domain.  Now, you may be asking what is Active Directory and what does this mean to me.  Here is some quick information and I will get into more detail in further posts.

1. What is Active Directory?
• Hopefully easy to understand answer -- Active Directory can be compared to a phone book for a city... plus a little bit. A city phone book provides a central spot for telephone and address information for the people that are part of the city. At CalU, the Active Directory is a central spot to store information and settings about the people that use computer systems owned and / or operated by CalU.... plus it allows you to log onto a computer and access the programs and data that you need to do your job.
• Technical mumbo jumbo answer -- Active Directory is an implementation of LDAP directory services by Microsoft for use in computer environments.
2. Hmmm, so when I get to work in the morning and type in "lastname" (or something similar) and my password that has something to do with Active Directory?
• Yes, that is it!  That is known as your "User Account" or "User Name" and it is kept in Active Directory.  When you type in your "User Name" and password the computer talks to Active Directory and ensures you typed the correct information.
3. When you say "move all accounts, computers and email" from cup.edu to Calu what does that mean?
• Now that you understand that the "User Account" is in Active Directory I will add to that and tell you that a lot of the computers on campus also are in Active Directory.  Why in the world would you need a computer in Active Directory?  This allows UTS to manage each of these computers and ensure they remain secure and safe. 
• So accounts and computers are in Active Directory.  Today the CalU Active Directory is called Cup.edu.  That is of course a problem because we are no longer cup.edu.  So... We must move the computers and User Accounts from Cup.edu to a Calu Active Directory structure.
4. Wait a minute, you forgot to mention something about email, what is going on with that?  Last I checked I had a @calu.edu email address.
• Many months ago we were able to make a change in the cup.edu system to mask everyone's email account so they could use either @cup.edu or @calu.edu.  This change is a temporary measure that allows everyone to look like they are from @calu.edu even though they really reside in cup.edu.
• So, it is now time to make the final change and permanently get rid of cup.edu.  This means we must move your Email mailbox from the mail servers that are in charge of cup.edu to mail servers that are in charge of calu.edu.

That is a lot of information!!  Hopefully it helps you understand a little further what we need to do within this project.  There is a lot more information and I will post more in the coming days.  If you have any questions or comments please let me know!

Thanks!

Andy