asked on

Server 2003 migration of DC, AD, DNS, Server 2008 Enterprise, Server 2012

Greetings,

I looking for information regarding my best option for migrating out of our current Server 2003 which is currently providing DC, AD, & DNS.
While I want to migrate the above roles out of Server 2003 we do want to keep the Server 2003 available for use with older programs (no internet access).
Our current setup is as follows......
Physical Server (Hyper-V host to 3 VM Servers below): Server 2008 R2 Enterprise (currently not part of the Domain)
3 Hyper-V VM's:
1. Server 2003 ( currently providing DC, AD, DNS),
2. Server 2003 Terminal Server (running a few older programs) ,
3. Server 2012 R2 (RDP Server for 2 remote users)

Which is our best option for replacing Roles from the Server 2003: migrating into our Physical 2008 Enterprise Server or migrating into the Server 2012 R2 VM Server ?
While I realize there are issues with migrating to either the 2008 Enterprise or the 2012 VM Server I am looking for opinions on best option.

Thank you in advance.
John B

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Seth Simmons

membership

This solution is only available to members.

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

Start Free Trial

COM1

ASKER

Thanks for commenting Seth,
The "issues" I mentioned above have to do with the fact that neither the Server 2008 as a "physical" machine and host to VM's and the Server 2012 as a RDP Server is a good choice to hold DC roles.
So your opinion is the best option is to utilize the Server 2012 even as it serves as a RDP server for 2 remote users?
I can see how It would be much easier & faster to recover / restore the Server 2012 VM over the Server 2008 physical machine....plus if the Server 2012 DC goes down it could be restored remotely.
I have never promoted a 2012 Server.....the Server 2012 promotion Wizard will find the current DC on the Domain and auto perform adprep functions?
Thank you again for commenting.

Kevin Hays

I agree wit Seth, I would not have a DC as a VM. A DC doesn't require an expensive hardware set to function and you should be able to have dual physical DC's without much cost. After that you could have a 2008 physical machine which hosts the other VM's to provide roles for your network. You could even look into VMware for a VM server to provide the VM's.

Normally I believe you had to manually addprep to introduce a 2008 machine into a 2003 forest/domain then demote the 2003 DC if that was the route someone wanted to take. If the 2012 does this for you it's even easier. I've not had to perform this with a 2003 -> 2012 yet so I cannot comment directly on that.

But yeah, you want some type of Fault Tolerance for the DNS/DHCP/AD roles.

Kevin

COM1

ASKER

Thank you Seth for your time and expertise.
I ended up utilizing the Server 2012 R2 VM as the new Domain Controller and all migrated well using Server 2012 built in migration tools and auto adprep functions.