Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Michael McGuire
Michael McGuireFlag for United States of America

asked on

FRS to DFS Migration

I am going to be adding a new 2016 Domain Controller to my 2012R2 domain.  Currently I have 2(qty) 2012R2 Domain Controllers.  I was reading some information about FRS and DFS.  I don't recall ever converting FRS to DFS when we upgraded to a 2012R2 domain.  I research a command to run (dfsrmig /getglobalstate) and this was it's output: DFSR migration has not yet initialized. My question is do I need to convert this before introducing a 2016 Domain controller?  Are there any risks to converting that would cause disruption or incompatibility with my servers or DC's?  My current functional level is 2008R2.  I found this article to help with the migration if that's what I need to do:

 Patrick van den Born - Citrix Technology Advocate - Blog: Windows Server 2016 - FRS Deprecated: How to migrate SYSVOL replication from FRS to DFS replication 

Does anyone have a better procedure than this one?


ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Carl Webster
Carl Webster
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Michael McGuire

ASKER

Would you suggest that I raise the Function Level to 2012R2 before Migrating?
Also which of the 3 Streamline Methodologies would you suggest to use?  I downloaded the AD Replication Tool and found no errors and also ran the DCDIAG cmd from your article and got no errors.
Would this Migration produce any downtime or risk of it?
Would you suggest that I raise the Function Level to 2012R2 before Migrating?

you could but not necessary.  your functional level is good enough to convert

Would this Migration produce any downtime or risk of it?

no downtime
the only risk would be if there were replication issues but if you have already checked that then you should be ok
with only 2 domain controllers, shouldn't take long for each step to complete
I would wait until after migrating SYSVOL to DFSR before raising the DFL/FFL.

As a consultant coming in blind to an AD environment, I always used the quick migration steps to make sure all was good.
OK everything looks pretty straight forward and running the test/diagnostics seems to verify my replication and DC are working without errors. Looks like I don't really have anything to worry about when perforating the migration.  I do perform a daily System State Backup of my DC containing all the FSMO roles.  I assume I could use this to revert back if for some reason (which seems unlikely) I run into issues?  Just to verify this migration only effects the Doman Controllers correct?
The migration only affects SYSVOL. You could also make a robocopy backup of SYSVOL if you want to be extra safe. I have never done that myself.
Thanks for your help and suggestions!  I feel confident enough moving forward with the Migration, which I will perform this weekend.
Unless you have many 1000s of GPOs, the complete migration should not take long at all.