So I've been working on a Double Hop migration from 2003 to 2012.
Things have been going relatively smoothly, having to work around
people's schedules etc. I had promoted the 2008 first hop server to a DC
to prepare for when I have to shutdown the 2003 machine to install
exchange 2013 on server 2012. Problem is I was letting the machine sit
for month to make sure everything was stable and working properly after
moving a test mailbox from 2003 and my own email. This has been working
fine for the past month and decided to start moving all of the employee
accounts one by one (relatively small business). Problem is 2 nights ago
the 2003 DC has started shutting down every 2 hours because of another
DC on the domain (as per licensing of SBS 2003). This would have been
great to know BEFORE promoting 2008 to DC and installing Exchange 2010
on it. Now I'm faced with either demoting the 2003 DC, but I fear
breaking something on the 2003 Exchange or demoting the 2008 DC and
possibly breaking Exchange 2010. Other alternative is to suffer through
these shutdowns, manually startup the server every two hours for the
next week while I frantically move the rest of the mailboxes. ( I would
rather not)
So, question is: Can I safely demote 2008DC with
Exchange 2010 installed, point Exchange 2010 to the 2003 DC and have
everything continue to work smoothly? Then at a later date when all the
mailboxes are moved, promote 2008 to DC again? When I demote the 2008DC will it delete Exchange 2010 mailboxes? I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.