This is a must to read article for any system administrator who administers Microsoft Windows Servers. One of any system administrator duties, would be to upgrade a current domain controller to a new hardware server. One of the crucial steps required to successfully migrate your domain controller, is to be able to successfully transfer the FSMO roles to the new hardware server. FSMO stands for Flexible Single Master Operations, and in a forest there are at least five roles. In this article, I will be showing you how to transfer the FSMO in Windows Server 2008, and in my next article, I will show you the complete steps required to successfully migrate/upgrade your domain controller to a new hardware server.
The five FSMO roles are:
The first two roles above are forest-wide, meaning there is one of each for the entire forest. The last three are domain-wide, meaning there is one of each per domain. If there is one domain in your forest, you will have five FSMO roles. If you have three domains in your forest, there will be 11 FSMO roles. The FSMO roles are going to be transferred, using the following three MMC snap-ins :
Active Directory Schema snap-in : Will be used to transfer the Schema Master role
Active Directory Domains and Trusts snap-in : Will be used to transfer the Domain Naming Master role
Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in : Will be used to transfer the RID Master, PDC Emulator, and Infrastructure Master roles
Note: The following steps are done on the Windows Server 2008 machine that I intend to set as the roles holder ( transfer the roles to it )
Lets start transferring the FSMO roles.
You have to register schmmgmt.dll in order to be able to use the Active Directory Schema snap-in
Till now, we have successfully transferred two FSMO roles, the Schema Master role and the Domain Naming role. The last three roles can be transferred using a single Snap-in.
That's it, by now, you have successfully transferred the five FSMO roles to the Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller.
[ This article is posted at ElMajdal.Net website : http://www.elmajdal.net/Win2k8/Transferring_FSMO_Roles_in_Windows_Server_2008.aspx ]
LeoPonti-MVP edited Revision 3. Comment: Excelent!!, Add Info!
Richard Mueller edited Revision 2. Comment: Noted that 2 of the FSMO roles are forest-wide, 3 are domain-wide
Fernando Lugão Veltem edited Revision 1. Comment: added toc and tags