Question : AD 2003 to 2008 Migration Question

Hello,

I was just wondering if it's safe to take a DC offline before running ADprep on it to ensure that it runs without error before putting it back on the network and letting the changes replicate.

I plan on transferring the FSMO roles to a Virtual DC, taking a snapshot, then taking it off the network, and running ADprep. That way if anything goes wrong I can just revert to the snapshot and add it back to the network.

Thoughts?

Answer : AD 2003 to 2008 Migration Question

It is safe to isolate a DC like that but really not needed and in fact not even recommended anymore.  Take a look at the DS team mail sack from last month

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/04/16/friday-mail-sack-i-live-again-edition.aspx

See tje question is there anyway to isolate a DC...

You can also run into USN rollback issues with snapshots.

I've yet to hear of an adprep for 2008 doing damage to an AD...at this point it has been done thousands of times on various networks.  If there was a major issue it would have surfaced by now.

Thanks

Mike