asked on

Promoting a Windows 2012 R2 Server

Hi Experts,

I have a active directory that have several domain controllers spread across several sites. All the current domain controllers are running Windows 2008 R2 except one domain controller.

The forest and domain functional level is Windows 2008 and I am not able to raise this level (highest).

I have two new domain controllers that I would like to deploy in my domain. These new domain controllers are running Windows server 2012 R2.

I started to promote one of the servers that is running server 2012 R2 but the AD promotion process wants to upgrade the following:

Forest prep, domain, and schema prep.

My main concerns are:

What will be the effect on the above actions? Will the domain controller with windows 2008 still work after the the new 2012 Dc is promoted?

Will this mess up anything on the other dc at the other site?

What would be the domain and forest level after the new DC (2012) is promoted.

What OS would the client machine have to have in order to work on the domain?

Thanks

SOLUTION

Emmanuel Adebayo

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Teavana

ASKER

Thank you for responding.

I did not make any changes as yet; I wanted to be sure of the effects before continuing the process because I am making the changes in a live environment.

So to be clear:

1) You are saying that by promoting the new windows 2012 R2 server to a DC this process will not change the current Functional and domain level from Windows 2008 ?

2) The DC that is running Windows 2008 OS will still function until I demote it ?

3) The client machines will not be affected?

I know that Windows XP machines do not work with AD if the functional level is 2012.

I just want to be sure, I do not want to mess this up as you can imagine this would be bad.

Thanks

Teavana

ASKER

Any thoughts or can someone else comment on this item for me?

Thanks

Emmanuel Adebayo

You will not mess anything up and the answer to all ypur concerns are yes. I'm 100% certain.

If you want to confirm yourself again, you ca just quickly set up a lap with two Windows 2008 servers as AD and then add Windows 2012 server as domain.

You can achieve this by just using Hyper-V. (This is can be done on your laptop, if you are uisng Windows 7 or Windows 8, enable Hyper-V and install Dev servers)

regards

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Cliff Galiher

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Teavana

ASKER

Hi Cliff,

Thanks for confirming these items.

What do you mean by " But if changes have been made, XP compatibility may be broken and they won't be able to authenticate against the 2012 R2 DCs, resulting in intermittent logon failures dependent on which DC they happen to be attempting against. "

I have a few Windows XP Professional client machines that are in the same site as the windows server 2012 R2 server.

We are in the process of replacing these XP machines but it will not be done until the next few months so what ever change I make now, these machine will still have to work on the domain.

Thanks

SOLUTION

Cliff Galiher

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Teavana

ASKER

Thanks for explaining. I am just having second thoughts if I should introduce the 2012 R2 DC in my environment now since we some XP machines on the domain.

Teavana

ASKER

I've requested that this question be closed as follows:

Accepted answer: 0 points for Teavana's comment #a40217476
Assisted answer: 250 points for Emmanuel Adebayo's comment #a40216461
Assisted answer: 250 points for Cliff Galiher's comment #a40217444

for the following reason:

Thank you both for your help, I appreciate. I was able to successfully promote the 2012 R2 machine to a DC without any issues.

You re correct, the promotion process did not change the Functional levels.

Thanks

Teavana

ASKER

Thanks again!