Saturday, August 9, 2008

Migrating from SYSVOL to DFS-R in 2008

FRS will soon be obsolete. Microsoft has replaced it with DFS-R in 2k8 which offers better capacity, better performance, and is easier to troubleshoot.

First upgrade all domain controller to 2k8, then raise domain functional level to 2008.

Migration is done with DFSRMIG.EXE and consists of 4 states
0 - start
1 - copy SYSVOL to SYSVOL_DFSR. FRS still active
2 - SYSVOL redirected to SYSVOL_DFSR. all clients now use the new one
3 - SYSVOL replication stopped. original must be removed manually

To start, run dfsrmig /setglobalstate 1
then dfsrmig /getmigrationstate until it says that all domain controllers have been synched. It took 6 minutes on my single domain (3 DCs) but microsoft says allow up to an hour on larger setups. It's like watching grass grow so go get some coffee or something for a few minutes.
Then dfsrmig /setglobalstate 2
repeat the same /getmigrationstate

*Now you can rollback and go back to the way things were by running /setglobalstate 0 or 1. Once you change to state 3, you can't go back. You don't have to do step 3 yet in case you want to run it for a few days but keep in mind that you shouldn't do any changes to policies, etc until you complete this as replication to the old SYSVOL share isn't working anymore. I personally am only on step 2 and am going to give it a try for a few days this week. (checking event logs, listening for complaints, the usual). I'll update this post if anything goes wrong. :)

When you're ready to finish this, run dfsrmig /setglobalstate 3
Do the /getmigrationstate until it says you're done.

References (with much more detail):
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2008/02/14/sysvol-migration-series-part-2-dfsrmig-exe-the-sysvol-migration-tool.aspx

http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=2516

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