What Is Your Domain Functional Level

Domain functional level dfl determines the features of a domain controller dc based on the windows server operating system os it runs on.

What is your domain functional level. In this lab i had the domain and forest functional level set to server 2016. Dsquery cn schema cn configuration. I was able to. Today i recognized that it is not easy to find a comprehensive summary table about active directory domain and forest functional levels operating mode on the internet.

With windows server 2012 and r2 it is possible to roll back forest and domain functional level with limitation as defined in table in the link. Dsquery dc lab dc local scope base attr msds behavior version ntmixeddomain. Get domain functional level using dsquery. To directly quote microsoft domain forest functional levels determine the available active directory domain services ad ds domain or forest.

This was fine until a few days later when i needed to test an application that was not supported for functional domains and forest levels greater than server 2012r2. Under the general tab the domain functional level and forest functional level is displayed on the screen. Active directory functional levels are controls that specify which advanced active directory domain features can be used in an enterprise domain. If you have to revert to a lower functional level with a version of windows server that is earlier than windows server 2008 r2 you must rebuild the domain or forest or restore it from a backup copy.

0 0 windows 2000 native 0 1 windows 2000 mixed 2 0 windows 2003 3 0 windows 2008 4 0 windows 2008 r2 5 0 windows 2012. Feature set of a particular dfl will be available for a dc if it runs on the operating system version that is compatible with the functional level. Functional levels determine the available active directory domain services ad ds domain or forest capabilities. Right click the root domain then select properties.

Get the active directory schema version using dsquery. Rather than starting from scratch with this lab i decided to test lowering the functional levels from server 2016 to server 2012r2. The enterprise domain is usually comprised of domain controller that run on different versions of the windows server operating system. Functional levels are set at these default levels to give you the option of adding windows 2000 or windows server 2003 based domain controllers to your new windows server 2008 forest.

They also determine which windows server operating systems you can run on domain controllers in the domain or forest. There are some explanations with the functions up to windows server 2008 r2 and some on the differences between windows server 2008 r2 and windows server 2012.