Recover Forest After Functinal Level Raise

[MillzyD]

Hi All,

I am planning on upgrading our forest (only have one domain in the forest) to the 2008 R2 functional level from 2003, I have done some research on restoring the forest if things go wrong, we have about 10 domain controllers spread over several countries and I was wondering if I could just simply do a system state backup on each dc before raising the functinal level and if things dont work out then disconnect all the dc's from the network and restore the system state on each then put them back on the network to restore the forest and domain to the 2003 functional level?

Thanks

Dave

 

[ShackDaddy]

It's WAY easier than that.

You only need to back up and restore system state on a single DC. Once you restore, you basically mark it "Authoritative" and that forces all the other DC's to accept the changes from that system.

BTW, I have never seen anyone have a problem raising the forest functional level.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[MillzyD]

Hi ShackDaddy,

Thanks for your response, I tried the restore on a test domain and it didnt work by only doing one system state restore (marked as authoritative) the restored dc ended up back at 2008 r2 functional level, it did work by restoring all dc's whilst off line, only the first was done with a authoritative sysvol, the rest just straight restore.

I dont really think we will have any issues once the functional level is raised, just coving my bases.

Again thanks for the response.

Dave