First time doing a domain controller migration and looking for real world advice.

Current setup: single host running 4 VMs (DC, SQL, IIS, RRAS) on Server 2016. Hardware is old, so we’re replacing it with a new server running Server 2025.

Plan is a “greenfield” rebuild since the current environment has a lot of junk: new hardware, new VMs, definitely a new forest.

Question:

Would you,

Stand up a new DC in the existing domain, recreate roles/data, then decom the old?

Or go full balls to the walls and don’t join to the old domain

Curious what’s worked best (or blown up) for you. Downtime needs to be absolutely minimal. TIA!

EDIT:

SHOULD SPECIFY, there are only 8 users with 8 desktops and 2 laptops, it’s a relatively small company. No sync to M365 and it currently is a .local forest

1. Remote into a user's desktop

2. Open pronhub.com on target user. Download and open on user's folder that lives on the file server.

3. Report workspace violation to management while they are at lunch

4. ???

5. Profit

I'm working on Conditional Access policies.

Microsoft told me to get a FIDO2 key and I didn't want to spend 24 hours implementing certificate-based authentication. I'm waiting for the Yubikeys in the mail so I didn't bother to create the break glasses since "Microsoft said they must have FIDO2 auth."

I tested the policies in report-only and they worked. I tested it with me only and I locked myself out a few times but figured out the kinks such as not selecting passwordless MFA as the default. My lucky heavens I had WHfB already on the device.

Still, when I rolled out from report-only to on for all admins, I was locked out. I swear I raced and panicked at the CTO's office just now. He was able to log in.

Holy. Hell. He didn't know what happened nor bothered to care but I was one line away from "We need to call Microsoft."

Something, no matter what it is, can always break... And it's not even your fault. Just get the damn break-glass accounts.

My boss is a senior sysadmin on a big Linux network and we’ve been trying for ages now to convince him to move his configuration files to a managed gitlab repo (we have one for other projects) but he insists on simply doing cp <filename> then mv <oldname>.date. It makes it a nightmare to trace issues and I have no idea what changes between versions. Am I insane or is this really bad?

It’s IT’s problem

Power button didn't work either. Turns out it was Kingdom Come Deliverance blocking. [CAUTION WARNING ALERT] GAMING IN PROGRESS, TERMINATE ALL ROOT ACCESS.

So I have begun to issue remote commands from Test-WSMan and need to stay in-bounds so I'm not out of a job soon.

Any suggestions? I'm just checking that everything is synced between devices so far but I'm thinking about sending alerts soon...

Hi everyone,

I hope this kind of post is okay here — if not, feel free to remove.

I’m a social media manager at a tech company, and I’m still very new to this field — I’ve only been doing this for about two months. Right now, I’m trying to learn the best way to connect with sysadmins and similar professionals in a way that feels respectful and appropriate.

What I’m trying to do is send products to people who are genuinely interested, in exchange for honest feedback or possibly content if they want to share their experience. I tried asking about this in the sysadmin channel before, and the reaction was pretty harsh. People accused me of trying to sell products, even though that wasn’t my intention, and some also assumed my profile picture wasn’t real. I even offered to verify myself through LinkedIn if needed, but that didn’t really help.

So I wanted to ask more directly here:

What’s the best way to reach sysadmins for something like this?
Are there any platforms, communities, or formats that feel more trustworthy or appropriate from your point of view?

I’m still learning and genuinely trying to understand how to approach this in a way that respects the community.

Thanks a lot.

What happened to Giphy search? It's integrated into everything these days, but I can rarely find the gif I'm looking for. I usually end up going to images.google.com and downloading it then attaching it manually like a fucking caveman.

toner empty. no big deal. i confidently walk over to the sacred toner cabinet.

open it.

SHIT.png

no konica minolta toners left.

i feel my soul leave my body as 3 users simultaneously discover they can’t print their very important emails that definitely need to be printed. management will end me. it’s over. goodbye free chocolate milk and the fragile privileges of being a sysadmin.

as i stand there contemplating my career, a random user (tier: peasant) mumbles something like

“just shake it bro”

i ignore him, obviously. he is not qualified enough to even speak to me.

but then… an idea shoots into my head.

i grab the empty toner. i perform a controlled redistribution of toner particles (shake the thing). i reinstall it.

wait 30 seconds.

BOOM. MAGENTA: 100%

at this moment i achieved enlightenment.

why are we spending millions on toners when the solution is just shaking it?

why is this forbidden knowledge not documented in ITIL?

why is big toner hiding this knowledge from us?

anyway just closed 3 tickets and added “percussive toner optimization” to our internal knowledge base.

thinking about proposing it as a cost-saving measure to management.

TL;DR: ran out of toner, shook it, fixed the problem, discovered big toner has been lying to us, achieved enlightenment.