In any AD there are five FSMO roles. Two are unique for the entire forest and three are for any domain. If you have a smaller environment, with only one domain in the forest, this domain hosts all five roles. If you have to change DCs, then you have to transfer all five FSMO roles to new servers. Here are all the steps how to transfer all roles, one by one.
At the beginning, you have to be sure, that the replication between all DCs is working well. You can check this with Active Directory Replication Status Tool .
Now, if it is working well, you can begin with the process to transfer all AD roles to servers that you want:
- Open Command prompt as Administrator.
- To find where roles are currently hosted, type NETDOM QUERY FSMO.
- Now you know where the roles are situated and you are ready to begin transferring the roles. At the command prompt, type NTDSUTIL.
- Type ROLES.
- Type CONNECTIONS to enter in the connection mode.
- Type CONNECT TO SERVER <ServerName> (where <ServerName> is the name of the Destination Server).
- Type Q for leaving the server connections mode.
- Type TRANSFER PDC for transferring the PDC role to the connected server and then click Yes in the Role Transfer Confirmation dialog box.
- The same step can be done for transferring other rules.
- Use TRANSFER INFRASTRUCTURE MASTER for transferring the Role Infrastructure Master Role, TRANSFER NAMING MASTER for the Naming Master role, TRANSFER RID MASTER, for the RID Master and TRANSFER SCHEMA MASTER, for Schema master role.
- When you have done, just type Q and press ENTER until you return to the command prompt.
