• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar
OpenTechTips

OpenTechTips

Comprehensive IT Guides for Pros and Enthusiasts

MENUMENU
  • HOME
  • ALL TOPICS
    • Exchange
    • InfoSec
    • Linux
    • Networking
    • Scripting
      • PowerShell
    • SSL
    • Tools
    • Virtualization
    • Web
    • Windows
  • ABOUT
  • SUBSCRIBE
Home » How to Transfer FSMO Roles

How to Transfer FSMO Roles

October 3, 2020 - by Zsolt Agoston - last edited on October 4, 2020

You can transfer any FSMO roles with the Move-ADDirectoryServerOperationMasterRole command.

Before transferring roles always check if the domain is healthy, and replication is uninterrupted.

Pre-Transfer Checks

Run these three commands on a domain controller, and check for any errors. If any comes up fix them before proceeding with the role transfer! There might be warnings referring to error entries in the syslog. Those errors are likely already resolved, focus on existing issues with the domain controllers.

# Check domain health
dcdiag /q /a

# Check replication
repadmin /replsum
repadmin /showrepl

Transfer FSMO Roles

When everything is ready for the transfer, the following PowerShell command will facilitate the immediate transfer of the roles. I like to run the command on the domain controller I plan to transfer the role(s) to:

# Transferring all FSMO roles to the domain controller called "TargetDC"
Move-ADDirectoryServerOperationMasterRole -Identity "TargetDC" -OperationMasterRole 0,1,2,3,4

## OR

# Transferring only the PDC emulator and the Infrastructure Master roles to "TargetDC"
Move-ADDirectoryServerOperationMasterRole -Identity "TargetDC" -OperationMasterRole 0,2

# Roles:
PDCEmulator or 0
RIDMaster or 1
InfrastructureMaster or 2
SchemaMaster or 3
DomainNamingMaster or 4

Verifying the Role Transfer

The following command lists all the five FSMO roles and their holder servers

netdom query fsmo

In out example it looks like this after the successful transfer:

C:\>netdom query fsmo
Schema master               DC.pro.com
Domain naming master        DC.pro.com
PDC                         TargetDC.pro.com
RID pool manager            DC.pro.com
Infrastructure master       TargetDC.pro.com
The command completed successfully.
C:\>

Related Posts:

  • FSMO Roles Simply Explained
  • What Happens When a FSMO Role Fails
  • How to Seize FSMO roles

Reader Interactions

Comments Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Tools

Secondary Sidebar

CONTENTS

  • Pre-Transfer Checks
  • Transfer FSMO Roles
  • Verifying the Role Transfer
  • Related Posts:

  • Terms of Use
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
Manage your privacy

To provide the best experiences, we and our partners use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site and show (non-) personalized ads. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Click below to consent to the above or make granular choices. Your choices will be applied to this site only. You can change your settings at any time, including withdrawing your consent, by using the toggles on the Cookie Policy, or by clicking on the manage consent button at the bottom of the screen.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Statistics

Marketing

Features
Always active

Always active
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}
Manage your privacy
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Statistics

Marketing

Features
Always active

Always active
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}