Oh now you’ve done it. I asked this question back in the spring of this year. Got a bazillion ‘you are crazy don’t do it’. But no one that had ever tried it that I could tell, including me. I was also in the you are crazy camp. But it is supported and this isn’t NT 4 anymore. So I did 5 of our 6 and had no issues whatsoever. The one I didn’t do had questionable hardware, so it was replaced with new gear. My environment is fairly simple, everything is fully patched and maintained very well. DC’s are only DC’s with DNS, DHCP and WINS.
After the first two, which are in my building, I decided to do the rest of them remote. No problems. If your stuff is clean, and you have a spare that isn’t mission critical, go for it. I think you will be fine. Donning my flame resistant undies now. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Raper Sent: Friday, January 8, 2016 2:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] In-place upgrade of a 2008 R2 DC to 2012 R2? Happy New Year to the collective! I know this has been supported since at least 2008….and sounds like it has improved with each iteration since. However, I am old school and have *never* been a fan of any kind of in-place upgrade. Further…. The very first sentence in Microsoft’s TechNet article Upgrade Domain Controllers to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012<https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh994618.aspx#BKMK_UpgradeWorkflow> , updated less than a year ago: “The recommended way to upgrade a domain is to promote domain controllers that run newer versions of Windows Server and demote older domain controllers as needed. That method is preferable to upgrading the operating system of an existing domain controller.” That being said, I’ve got an admin (junior to me) who seems to think it is a good idea (because he wants to cut a corner). I and another peer (also a senior engineer) disagree with him. Regardless, I’m curious if anyone here has tried this and if so what your experience was? Thanks, Jonathan
