You are most likely here because you have encountered an issue during your Active Directory Domain Controller migration.  Most likely your active directory is old, FRS was released back in Windows Server 2000 and was only supported up to Windows Server 2012. With Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 you must run DFSR instead of FRS. In this tutorial you will learn how to migrate SYSVOL from FRS to DFSR.

During your migration to the new environment, you may run in the following error if still using FRS and upgrading to new Domain Controller.

Windows Server version can no longer be added as an Active Directory domain controller (DC) to an existing domain that is still using File Replication Service (FRS) for replication of the SYSVOL share.

When you try to add a New Windows Server 2016- 2019 as a DC to the domain, you receive the following error messages:

• The specified domain %1 is still using the File Replication Service (FRS) to replicate the SYSVOL share. FRS is deprecated.
• The server being promoted does not support FRS and cannot be promoted as a replica into the specified domain.
• You MUST migrate the specified domain to use DFS Replication using the DFSRMIG command before continuing.

Of course, now you’re wondering how we can resolve this issue and the answer is to migrate how SYSVOL replicates from FRS to the latest DFSR.

These steps below will guide you through the process.

At this time we want to check the type of replication you are running and you can do this by opening up CMD as Administrator and running the following commands. 

dfsrmig /GetGlobalState

dfsrmig /GetMigrationState

Once the commands are done you should see a message saying Global state (‘start’). The “start” means that you are running FRS and you will need to move forward with the migration. However, if you see Global State “Eliminated” you don’t need to do FRS migration as its running as DFSR

Prerequisites

Make sure to always do your do diligence by making sure that the domain environment is running correctly before any migration. 

• This migration will only work with Windows Server 2008 or newer. Any other domain like Server 2003 must be removed from the environment. 
• Your domain Functional level should be running Windows server 2008 or higher.
• Make sure that your logging properly by becking built-in Administrators group has the “Manage Auditing and Security Log” user right on all your domain controllers.
• Make sure that you have the latest windows updates on all servers.
• It is an absolute must to make sure replication is working correctly in the domain environment. We can check this by running the following commands as administrator in CMD.
  • repadmin /syncall /AdeP – Initiate a full sync and wait.
  • repadmin /replsum – See if replication was run and you are shown with a minimum time (most recent time would be the time where you ran the above command)
  • dcdiag /e /c /q – Provides you a summary of the errors on your directory configuration for the entire environment.
  • dcdiag /e /test:sysvolcheck /test:advertising – This will ensure that SYSVOL is advertised among all domain controllers without any issues.
  • At this point you can progress forward if you did not receive any errors but if you have you need to resolve those first. 

Migration

We made it to the migration steps! This will be a phase-by-phase type of migrations where it will allow you to have the option to roll back just in case anything horrible happens.

While you go through the migration steps at some point you will be presented with some options to proceed from Number 0 to 3.

• 0 Start State
• 1 Prepared State
• 2 Redirected State
• 3 Eliminated State

In these next steps we will use commands containing ‘dfsrmig /SetGlobalState <state>’ and the state can be changed to the options you see from the above numerical value 0-3.

Prepared State

As we saw earlier, you will be shown to be in the ‘Start State’. Our task is to migrate the DFSR state to ‘Prepared’. For this, open the command prompt as administrator and run the below command;

dfsrmig /SetGlobalState 1

After you run the above command it will initiate the domain controller to start the migration task for the given state and will inform other domain controller servers as well. This process will take some time and depending. Once the command is executed, wait for 15mins and then proceed to run the command below to view the status of the migration process.

dfsrmig /GetMigrationState

Once the command is ran you will see the ‘State’ of your domain controllers. If you cannot wait for it to complete you can try to speed it up doing the following.

• Run a repadmin /syncall /AdeP to manually invoke replication to each domain controllers

Once the migration is complete, you will receive the state message  ‘Prepared‘ .

To confirm that this process completed you can also check for a new folder SYSVOL_DFSR within C:\WINDOWS\SYSVOL .

Redirected State

As we done in the previous steps we saw a ‘Start State’. Our task is to migrate the DFSR state to ‘Prepared’. Open the command prompt as administrator and run the below command;

dfsrmig /SetGlobalState 2

After you run the above command it will initiate the domain controller to start the migration task for the given state and will inform other domain controller servers as well. This process will take some time and depending. Once the command is executed, wait for 15mins and then proceed to run the command below to view the status of the migration process.

dfsrmig /GetMigrationState

Once the command is ran you will see the ‘State’ of your domain controllers. If you cannot wait for it to complete you can try to speed it up doing the following.

• Run a repadmin /syncall /AdeP to manually invoke replication to each domain controllers

Once the migration is complete, you will receive the state message  ‘Redirected‘ .

Eliminated State

As we done in the previous steps we saw a ‘Redirected State’. Our task is to migrate the DFSR state to ‘Eliminated’. Open the command prompt as administrator and run the below command;

dfsrmig /SetGlobalState 3

After you run the above command it will initiate the domain controller to start the migration task for the given state and will inform other domain controller servers as well. This process will take some time. Once the command is executed, wait for 15mins and then proceed to run the command below to view the status of the migration process.

dfsrmig /GetMigrationState

Once the command is ran you will see the ‘State’ of your domain controllers. If you cannot wait for it to complete you can try to speed it up doing the following.

• Run a repadmin /syncall /AdeP to manually invoke replication to each domain controllers.

Once the migration is complete, you will receive the state message  ‘Eliminated‘ .

Congratulations you have completed the SYSVOL From FRS to DFSR Migration.

I hope this article was helpful, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. If you would like to be notified of when I create a new post, you can subscribe to my blog alert.

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Patrick Domingues

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