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Hello all.

This is probably a rookie question, but I surprisingly haven’t had to deal with something like this before. I would appreciate any answers/knowledge that could be shared with me.

Some quick history first. I have an existing domain that used to have 7 domain controllers, one per site. This made sense when we were a point-to-point network, but not so much on an MPLS and upgraded bandwidth. I have demoted all but 2, so that I could have a “main” DC and then a backup DC. The two remaining are a first generation Windows 2008 Standard and a Windows 2003 Standard. One is at our Datacenter location (Win2k8) and the other at one of our remote sites. I am going to replace both of these with Windows 2012 servers (downgraded to Windows 2008 R2), because I am getting replication and group policy propagation issues between the two current ones. I am assuming that has to do with one being 2k8 and the other being 2k3, but not 100% sure on that.

My plan is to install the two new domain controllers and then demote/remove the two existing ones.

So my questions are this:

  1. Can I run Server 2012 domain controllers in a environment that has Server 2k8 and 2k3, Windows 7 and a few remaining Windows XP machines?

  2. In AD sites and services, should setup all of my internal subnets, and all of my remote locations or would I just create a site for the two locations that have DC’s?

  3. Should I only setup a site link between the two locations that have DC’s?

Questions 2 & 3 - I am just looking for general guidance to go along with what I have been reading, to get a general feel for how all of you set it up.

Thanks again for any responses. The AD sites and services is a bit confusing to me, as I haven’t really had a need to mess with any settings too much before.

6 Spice ups
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  1. Yes

  2. Don’t know

  3. Don’t know

In first! :smiley:

3

lol

1 Spice up
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That being said and with regard to question 2, I can tell you that we don’t have any subnets defined in our AD’s, and we have 2. As a matter of fact, I was just today pondering why we don’t have any subnets defined. In any case, it doesn’t seem like defining subnets is always required, but not knowing what purpose that serves I don’t know if you need to do it for your situation or not.

Still completely blank on 3. We’ll probably get more activity on this tomorrow.

Good luck, have a good night! :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
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Anybody else have some ideas or thoughts to the questions I posed? Appreciate any information that can be shared with me.

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Question 1. Yes you can have 2012 mixed with the older DC’s. Only problem being, you wont be able to use the features of 2012 unless all other DCs where 2012. You would have to run your Domain functional level at 2003 because 2003 is your lowest DC.

Question 2. You only need to create the subnets if you have DC’s in other subnets. If all your DC’s are part of the same subnet then there is no need to create more subnets in AD S&S.

Question 3. Depends if your DC’s are in different locations. So lets say you have 1 building that house your DC’s, and you have branch offices that have lets say a RODC. Then you can create a site link from each RODC to your main DCs. But if your branch offices have no DC’s and just connect through a point-to-point router link then there is no need for site link becuase all there data replication is happing over the ppp already. A site link is only used when you have DC’s setup at remote sites for replication.

1 Spice up
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Thank you for the very informative answer. I would just like to clarify a few things based on your responses.

  1. Since I currently only have 2 DC’s and I am planning on installing two new DC’s, that will be 2012. I will then demote and remove the exisiting 2003 DC and 2008 DC. This will leave me with only the two 2012 DC’s in the environment. Based on this, I can raise the domain functional level to 2012, even though I still have a few remaining XP clients mixed with 2003 file/app servers, 2008 file/app servers, Exchange 2010 and Windows 7?

  2. So since one of my DC’s will be at our Datacenter and the other at a remote facility. I only need to setup the subnet for the remote facility and the Datacenter. That is exactly what I thought and appreciate you confirming that.

  3. Same principle applies, I just setup the site link between the datacenter and the remote facility where the other DC is. I will a bit fuzzy on that, but again, appreciate you clarifying this.

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Raising the Domain Functional Level will only affect Domain Controllers. So you will be able to update the domain functional level to 2012. AFTER all your other DC have been demoted.

1 Spice up
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Thank you again for your help with this. I very much appreciate it.

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While not relevant to the answer, there are other services that could benefit from properly configuring your subnets/sites and the site link costs. DFS an DFS-Replication rely upon this information (if properly configured) to determine the nearest DFS target and to calculate the most efficient replication topology.

Just throwing that out there…somebody call me out if I’m wrong.