I'm curious if anyone has taken the leap to upgrade their Active Directory Domain Services to the 2025 functional level. What has your experience been like? Are there any major issues or benefits you've encountered?
5 Answers
There's this article from nearly 15 years ago that really resonates today, highlighting that changes to functional levels don't significantly impact what you can do with AD. While I wouldn’t be too worried about having a 2025 AD DS functional level, I would definitely be cautious about running production workloads with it right now. Hopefully, all the issues will get ironed out soon!
I just set up a brand new production environment with 9 domain controllers and about 220 users, and it’s all running on 2025. So far, I haven't run into any issues. If you can maintain a clean setup with all new systems, it seems fine. But if you're coming from a mixed environment, it might be tough.
Curious, why do you need 9 DCs for only 220 users? In my last job, we managed 6,000 endpoints with just 3!
I’m currently on 2012R2 and using the Server 2019 family. Upgrading to the 2016 DFL is definitely on my radar, but I’m hesitant to move further just yet.
Our development environment is on 2025, and honestly, it's been a total nightmare. We've been constantly contacting our Customer Success Manager for help with a ton of bugs we've found, so much so that we've started a shared OneNote just to keep track of everything. We've faced duplicate schema attributes, Kerberos pre-auth issues, and some troublesome gMSA problems that required urgent fixes. If your environment is complex, like mine with over 150k users, I wouldn't recommend jumping to 2025 unless you have a solid development and testing setup. Stick to 2022 DCs with a 2016 Domain Functional Level for now.
It sounds risky with all the issues people are having. Once you upgrade, you're pretty much stuck dealing with any bugs until they're resolved. I think most people upgrading first will be those who need new features. If you must use 2025, consider keeping the functional level at 2016 to avoid complications.
That's a solid recommendation! Going with 2022 DCs and staying at a 2016 DFL seems wise given the current situation.
Yeah, I've heard there are some major changes coming with the 2025 DFL, so it’s definitely worth watching.