Mixing 2008r2 & 2012 DC's

[clodhopper]

I'm looking at upgrading one of our DC's to 2012 so I can us it in a cluster with some other 2012 HyperV hosts for File serving jobs and wondered if it's OK to mix a 2008r2 AD DC Master with a 2012 AD DC Slave ??

 

Any thoughts or glitches I might get ??

 

Thanks

[localzuk]

There are no such things as 'slaves' and 'masters' in AD.

 

Do you mean it wouldn't be a Global Catalog server?

 

We have 2 AD servers, one is a 2008R2 and one is a 2012 server - both are Global Catalogs though, and we have no issues.

[Michael]

You shouldn't experience any problems mixing 2008 R2 and 2012 servers, they'll work happily together.

[clodhopper]

So bad terminology still using the old terms :-)

 

Good to know so will give it a whirl :-)

[steviek]

We've looked into adding a 2012DC into our existing 2008RC ADDS environment. The recommendation from Microsoft is to ensure that the FSMO roles are on the latest OS version (i.e. none of the roles on 2008R2 where a 2012DC exists).

 

HTH

[clodhopper]

So I should be able to add the new 2012DC and then transfer all the FSMO roles onto it. Once this is done I can upgrade / wipe reinstall the servers to 2012 & then add them back in ??

[steviek]

Yep - that's our plan. Good article here:

 

Introducing the first Windows Server 2012 Domain Controller (Part 1 of 2) - Ask Premier Field Engineering (PFE) Platforms - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

[clodhopper]

Thanks for this, looks a good read