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You have to reset permissions, recreate accounts, and migrate profiles at a minimum if you rebuild as Brian M suggests...<br />
<br />
OR, you can migrate and if the network is configured appropriately to begin with, you can perform the migration during business hours without users even knowing anything was done. <br />
<br />
But even if not, thanks to virtualization, the data transfer can be VERY fast. &nbsp;You WILL virtualize the new server, correct?
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You have to reset permissions, recreate accounts, and migrate profiles at a minimum if you rebuild as Brian M suggests...

OR, you can migrate and if the network is configured appropriately to begin with, you can perform the migration during business hours without users even knowing anything was done.

But even if not, thanks to virtualization, the data transfer can be VERY fast.  You WILL virtualize the new server, correct?

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<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
hi,<br />
<br />
we had server 2003 as our domain server and run as file and printer server too, no DHCP, no DNS, these 2 control by Firewall, &nbsp;and now try to upgrade server 2012 domain, so should I just join the 2012 into 2003 domain, and the promote the 2012 into domain, and demote the 2003 as regular server? <br />
or just create 2012 as standalone domain ,go all user leave old domain join the new domain should be better, we only had 10 user, so that's not that difficult to do .<br />
any better suggestion? or which way is the better option.<br />
<br />
thanks<br />
<br />
SImon
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hi,

we had server 2003 as our domain server and run as file and printer server too, no DHCP, no DNS, these 2 control by Firewall,  and now try to upgrade server 2012 domain, so should I just join the 2012 into 2003 domain, and the promote the 2012 into domain, and demote the 2003 as regular server? 
or just create 2012 as standalone domain ,go all user leave old domain join the new domain should be better, we only had 10 user, so that's not that difficult to do .
any better suggestion? or which way is the better option.

thanks

SImon

server 2012 Domain replace

A domain controller is a server that responds to security authentication requests within a computer network domain. It is a network server that is responsible for allowing host access to domain resources. It authenticates users, stores user account information and enforces security policy for a domain

Domain Controller

Windows Server 2012 is the server version of Windows 8 and the successor to Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows Server 2012 is the first version of Windows Server to have no support for Itanium-based computers since Windows NT 4.0. Windows Server 2012, now in its second release (Windows Server 2012 Release 2) includes Foundation, Essentials, Standard and Datacenter, and does not support IA-32 or IA-64 processors.