<div>Along with the Active Directory Recycle Bin, a tremendous benefit to upgrading your Active Directory functional levels to 2008 R2 is the ability to use DFSR replication between domain controllers. With 2003 and earlier, domain controllers used File Replication Services to replicate directories like SYSVOL. FRS has several drawbacks such as having to retransmit entire files and minimal self-healing capabilities.</div>
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<div>With 2008 and later versions, you can migrate from FRS to DFSR (Distributed File System Replication). DFSR can replicate only changed bits (useful for large logon scripts, company wallpaper, install files, and other items commonly found in the SYSVOL directory) and has more robust self-healing capabilities for conflict resolution.</div>
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<div>Domains that are installed with 2008 or later functionality will have DFSR enabled by default. This procedure is only necessary for domains and forests that have been upgraded from 2003.</div>
<ol>
	<li>Run <strong>repadmin /replsum</strong> to verify replication health. Troubleshoot any problems found before proceeding. We'll want a clean bill of health for FRS replication before we retire it. Ideally you'll want all aspects of your domain controllers to be happy (<strong>dcdiag /e /v</strong>), but to check just FRS health on all of them at once, you can run <strong>dcdiag /e /test:FRSEvent</strong>.</li>
	<li>Upgrade all domain controllers to Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 and raise your domain functional level to 2008 or higher. Enabling DFSR replication is a per-domain setting and will not affect other domains in a forest. Also be aware that enabling DFSR is not a reversible change, but once you begin you will have several opportunities to stop if you change your mind.</li>
	<li>First we can verify that we're still using FRS with <strong>dfsrmig /getglobalstate</strong>. This is a command we'll come back to several times.</li>
	<li>dfsrmig /setglobalstate 1</li>
	<li>dfsrmig /getmigrationstate</li>
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