Upgrade Domain Functional Level From 2003 To 2008 R2
Introduce newly installed windows server 2008 based or windows server 2008 r2 based domain controllers into the forest and then retire all domain controllers running windows 2000.
Upgrade domain functional level from 2003 to 2008 r2. The second restriction for which there is a limited exception on windows server 2008 r2 is that once upgraded the domain or forest functional level cannot later be downgraded. Event id 15 s come through. Upgrading the pdc of a windows nt 4 0 domain as a child domain in an existing windows server 2003 forest where interim forest functional levels had been configured by using the ldp exe file or the adsiedit msc file permits security groups to use linked value replication after the operating system version upgrade. Summary when you create a new domain or a new forest set the domain and forest functional levels to the highest values that you know your environment can support.
Before you raise the domain functional level you must upgrade all windows server 2003 based domain controllers in that domain to windows server 2008 or windows server 2008 r2. Our exchange environment is already on 2010. The only purpose that having such ability would serve would be so that downlevel dcs could be added to the domain. To be safe we restarted all the domain controllers since we were.
Restarted kdc service on all the domain controllers and still had a couple of. Starting in windows server 2008 r2 however. After raising domain and forest functional levels from 2003 to server 2008 r2 we started to get a few event id 15 on the domain controllers for a couple of service accounts. Perform an in place upgrade of all existing domain controllers running windows 2000 in the forest to domain controllers running windows server 2003.
If the domain functional level is set to windows server 2008 r2 it cannot be rolled back for example to windows server 2003. We are in the process of replacing all of our windows 2003 domain controllers with windows 2008 r2 domain controllers.