AD 2003: impact of raising domain / forest functional level ?

[cabetcove]

Dear All,
we are currently running our AD on W2K3 Domain Controllers. No W2K and NT 4.0 DC left !
Since we plan to migrate to Exchange 2007 we have to raise the domain functional level of the forest root domain from W2K Mixed to W2K3 Server and the domain functional level of the 2 child domains from W2K Native to W2K3 Server.
Then we plan to raise the whole forest functional level to W2K3 Server.
Question: Does anybody know if this will have any impact on our infrastructure like MS Exchange 2003, MS SQL Servers, Sharepoint Servers etc.... ?
Any clue and experience report greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Tom

 

[itsp1965]

Other may chime in but as far as I know since you know longer have any legacy server OSses running domain services, there shouldn't be any issue with you going to a pure Win2K3 domain functional level

 

[terry712]

get it up - it aint an issue

 

[58sniper]

There should be no issues. But you only need to raise the child domains that will have Exchange servers in them (dunno if that's both). Once you raise them, do the schema updates during a relatively quiet time on the network.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[Zelandakh]

Look at Exchange 2000 or earlier on your network and Windows 2000 and earlier. If there is nothing there should be no issues. If there are some, there is unlikely to be issues.

Essentially it only affects DCs so if you have 2003 and 2008, you'll be fine.