Hey everyone! I recently installed Server 2025 as an Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP server, but after facing some problems, I ended up reverting to Server 2019. Right now, my 2019 version is doing fine, but since I didn't get a downgrade license, I'm worried about the time bomb of running an evaluation version as a domain controller. My main question is—if I try to upgrade directly to 2025 from 2019, will I run into the same issues I did before, or is there a chance it's been resolved? I made sure to do a full update on 2025 before I added it as a DC, so I'm puzzled as to why it still had problems. I definitely plan to back everything up before attempting any upgrades, but I'm aiming to minimize downtime. Any advice based on your experiences would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
I thought downgrade rights were automatic for server licenses? If your current license doesn’t work, maybe you could use Server 2022 instead of 2025. Have you checked with your vendor?
Upgrading Active Directory can definitely be a dicey process! It's not only about the OS version; schema updates and replication timing play big roles too. Even with a stable 2025 version, if your network isn’t fully solid during the promotion, you could run into issues again. The safest method is actually to set up a brand new 2025 DC in your forest, let the replication happen, and then cleanly decommission the old 2019 DC. Sure, it might take a bit longer, but it’ll relieve some of that stress about the eval version.
I’m not really familiar with licensing either, but I’ve read that you can contact your provider to get a downgrade key. Just makes me wonder why they charge so much for those downgrade kits if it’s that straightforward!