Hi,
I'm looking at removing the last 2003 DC in my domain. My setup is as follows:
1 forest with 2 domain. Parent domain "parent" has 2008 and 2003 DCs. Child domain "child" has 1 2003 DC and multiple 2008 DCs. There are multiple global catalogs and the 2003 DC does not hold any FSMO roles. The forest uses a centralized DNS delegation with forest wide AD integrated zones. I've checked that my clients no longer use the 2003 DC for DNS referrals.
Looking through the documentation here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776503(v=ws.10).aspx it mentions checking that the remaining 2003 DC isn't holding the last replica of an application partition and gives steps for checking this. I've ran the ntdsutil and connected to my 2003 DC and then ran the list nc information\list nc replica commands. I get 7 naming contexts returned:
Found 7 Naming Context(s)
0 - CN=Configuration,DC=parent,DC=com
1 - CN=Schema,CN=configuration,DC=com
2 - DC=child,DC=parent,DC=com
3 - DC=parent,DC=com
4 - DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=parent,DC=com
5 - DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=child,DC=parent,DC=com
6 - DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=parent,DC=com
When the list nc replica\info command is ran on my DCs in the child and parent domains for naming contexts 4 to 6 I see the replication partners listed as expected. However when I run the list command for contexts 0 to 3 I get no replicas found or "could find no special info for this partition"
I'm not sure if this is normal and whether I need to do anything additional when demoting my 2003 DC in the child domain?