dcpromo or brand new domain?

[password1234]

Hi all.

We look after alot of primary and infant schools across the county

Lot of them still running server 2008 looking to get them all to 2019 over the next year

 

Do you guys prefer doing a DCpromo or build a brand new domain from scratch? then redo all the policies and everything else from scratch

 

 

These schools are small around 10 desktop pcs and like 20/30 laptops plus a few admin machines

 

Any one have preferences?

[3s-gtech]

I firmly believe that a domain can be upgraded over many generations and years, with no negative effects, with decent planning and cleaning up. I’ve taken mine from 2000 up, and I’m very happy with its performance. Not on 2019 DCs yet, no apprehension about doing so.

[Jamman960]

I guess it depends upon the state of the AD, I'd want to standardise across them all to iron out any niggles that may exist if they've all been created independently/differently but even that could be achieved without a complete fresh start, there's nothing wrong with upgrading.

[aicrd]

I've got some forests now on 2019 that originally started at 2000 so I don't see an issue with upgrading 2008 to 2019.

 

I'd recommend however setting up new DCs and then removing the old ones as an in place upgrade from 2008 --> 2019 is going to get messy as you'll first have to upgrade to a compatible OS.

[caffrey]

One thing to take into consideration is that is it a single label domain. I'm not too sure what to do about our very old domain, whether to attempt a rendom or start from scratch

[p858snake]

I firmly believe that a domain can be upgraded over many generations and years, with no negative effects, with decent planning and cleaning up. I’ve taken mine from 2000 up, and I’m very happy with its performance. Not on 2019 DCs yet, no apprehension about doing so.

 

Microsoft allegedly still runs a old AD setup from NT they keep upgrading

[computer_expert]

One thing to take into consideration is that is it a single label domain. I'm not too sure what to do about our very old domain, whether to attempt a rendom or start from scratch

 

If you have an exchange server (newer than exchange 2003) then renaming domains isn't supported.

[caffrey]

Yep, we're okay on that front - it's a heads up as Windows 10 doesn't support domain joins for single label domains out of the box - you need a reg fix for it which is what I do.