Good Day,
I have 2 Windows Server 2008 R2 DC's in my network and I am trying to upgrade 1 of them to Server 2012 R2. The DC being replaced is also running Certificate Services. To do this I will need to remove AD from the DC as well as remove CA and remove it from the domain. I plan on backing up and restoring Active Directory/Certificate Services to the new Server 2012 box with the new server using the same name as the old DC.
I am worried about this transition because if something goes wrong I will have to not only restore from backup I will have to restore the computer object in AD as well.
Would the best strategy be:
Backup AD using ntdsutil
Uninstall AD and CA from DC01
Remove DC01 from domain
** failure occurs **
Restore DC01 computer object in AD on DC02 using ntdsutil authoritative restore
Restore full OS on DC01 from tape backup
The problem I have with this is all of the setting in Sites and Services will still be gone because of the removal of AD from DC01. I am also thinking about simply taking snapshots of the 2 DC's as they are both Virtual Servers in Hyper-V
Another Strategy:
Snapshot both DC01 and DC02
Uninstall AD and CA from DC01
Remove DC01 from domain
** failure occurs **
Revert back to pre-removal snapshot of DC02
Revert back to pre-removal snapshot of DC01
Any help would be awesome!
Antony