Making it clear with DFSR for WINDOWS 2008

I was recently onsite with a customer talking around their prospective DFSR deployment. There was clarification required around what the pre-requisites were for deploying DFSR into a Forest which will also have Windows 2003 R2 Domain Controllers spread across different Domains. Please see below for clarification around this issue;

1. The confusion arises over the use of DFSR for Sysvol replication.

This is only available if you meet the following pre-requisites;

a. The schema would need to be extended to 2008 level

b. The domain must be at WINDOWS 2008 functional Level (i.e. all Domain controllers in the domain running Windows 2008)

c. If this was an upgraded Domain environment you will need to migrate from legacy FRS replication to DFSR replication, using the utility dfsrMIG.EXE.

The migration process has the following advantages;

DfsrMig.exe – migrate SYSVOL replication from NTFRS to DFSR

The SYSVOL migration process:

1. Is simple and requires minimal admin intervention.

2. Is designed to be low risk and requires minimal downtime of the SYSVOL share.

3. Provides granular control to administrators so that they can monitor the status of migration and commit to DFSR replication of SYSVOL when everything is working smoothly.

4. Is reversible and allows the migration process to be rolled back prior to the final commit stage, thus allowing administrators to fall back on NTFRS replication of SYSVOL if desired.

5. Is robust, fault tolerant and is latency resilient, thus making it suitable for migration of domain controllers located in branch offices as well.

6. Provides built in monitoring mechanisms which can be used to keep track of the status of migration.