Microsoft Active Directory re-connect to target Domain after source domain migration
Asked by Wolfgang Kiesling:

We are using Confluence 5.10 and have it configured use Active Directory connecter for our users.

We will soon begin an Active Directory migration of our users and computer from our source domain (Domain1) to our target domain (Domain2).

My concern is that we have users that have created quite a bit of content. If user1 from source domain has content created in confluence and the user is then migrated to the target domain and the Active Directory connector is also reconfigured to connect to the target domain will the user1 still have access to his content?

Is the content still be associated with that user?

If not, how would I resolve this issue?

Thanks in advance for your help


Answers:
author: Mike Rathwell
body: Hi Wolfgang,

The last I looked at it, one of the issues I've run into is that the same username but found in a different directory *can* appear to be a whole new user. There is an excellent discussion on this very topic here <https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Migrate-users-to-new-user-directory-Confluence-5-4-4/qaq-p/106313>

I will be doing this same process (in my case migrating from local user base to AD) soon. I've done trials on it and it works well

comments: author: Wolfgang Kiesling
body: Thanks for the quick reply. I will have a look at the link you provided and hope it clarifies my concerns.


author: Mikael Sandberg
body: The thread linked above is updating information directly in the database, so if you do that you need to be careful and make sure that you have a backup before making any changes. I have tried this too and it works, but note that any changes done directly to the database is unsupported.

Because of the setup we have, and since we are also changing usernames during this migration, I opted to go with changing the user name attribute to be our email addresses, sync that across our Atlassian stack, and once every user is migrated turn on the new user directory and switch the user name attribute back to be sAMAccountName. Yes, this will create duplicate entries in the database, but because we are initially using the same user name attribute in both user directories, any content associated to that account will be kept. The only thing you would have to do is to add the "new" user into the same internal groups as before the migration.


author: Mikael Sandberg
body: Hi Wolfgang,

And welcome to the Atlassian Community.

The short answer is yes, the ownership of the content will be kept after the migration, as long as the username is kept the same. The only thing you do need to do is have the user log in again and assign them to the same group(s), if you are using local groups in Confluence. I am currently going through this exercise of AD migrations, and in my case to complicate things a bit more we are also changing user IDs.

comments: author: Wolfgang Kiesling
body: Thanks for the quick reply!

Not sure if it changes anything but to be specific we will be doing a inter-forest domain migration and so the user will be assign a new (SID) when they are migrated.

I can see this as being a possible issue if Confluence is using the (SID) as the identifier. Would you know if this is the case?


author: Mikael Sandberg
body: No, Confluence is using the value you specify as the User Name Attribute, by default it is sAMAccountName. As long as this does not change you are good.


Tags: confluence-server

server

user-management