Domain Controller upgrade

Question

The Active Directory (which provides authentication to log onto workstations, servers and applications) my organisation uses is provided by 3 domain controllers in a redundant set up. We aim to upgrade one Domain Controller at a time, from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Server 2016, one Domain Controller per weekend over a number weekends, aiming to start 18/02/2018. When all 3 Domain Controllers have been upgraded the “functional level’ of the domain will be raised to Server 2016.

Because the Active Directory is provided by the redundant set-up, when only one Domain Controller has been upgraded it’s hard to know which Domain Controller is being used by the application for authentication.

Once the first Domain Controller has been upgraded, is there any way to test authentication by pointing the application at the upgraded Domain Controller? Is there anything you can recommend or advise?

jmclarke · Answer

Hi Josh,

Thanks for your prompt reply. What you've said makes sense and we'll try that when it's time to upgrade.

Regards,

James

Josh Steckler · Answer

Hi James,

I went through a similar issue, not related to upgrades but for a need to hit a specific controller. On a non-production Jira instance, i was given the IP address of the specific controller I needed and put that in hostname field on my directory configuration.

I have seen my organization upgrade our domain controllers from 2003-->2008-->2016 and it has always gone well on the Jira aspect of it. Hope yours does too.