Add Server 2012 As A DC

Description:

So our main domain controller had issues updating the other month and we started thinking of a way to upgrade to a Server 2012 domain. Before reading, if you don’t have a domain controller yet I would read up on Setting Up A Domain Controller first. We decided we will do the following steps:

Steps in my task:

• Add a Server2012 VM to the domain.
• Transfer existing FSMO roles to the new server.
• Decommission the previous FSMO role holder.

To Resolve:

1. In this example, I created a DC VM and joined it to the domain and set a static IP on it. Make sure point the DNS to to the PDC as the primary DNS server.

2. Server Manager => Install Roles and Features => Install AD DS, DHCP, and DNS. Reboot.

3. After reboot, you go back to Server Manager => Actions => Activate DHCP and go through the wizard to “Promote this machine to a Domain Controller”. Ignore the warnings about “A delegation for this DNS server cannot be created…”, add your recovery password, and then finish. It will initiate a reboot.

4. After reboot, just sign in to the VM and let the replication start. At this point I let it replicate for a few days….

5. From here, the game is to just keep running dcdiag /e and repadmin /showrepl /errorsonly. And checking the Event Viewer every day.

   • I had an issue once where the newly joined DC had the system time wrong. Follow this article to resolve.

   • I had an issue once where the DHCP service kept showing errors in Event Viewer. Follow this article to resolve.