#FSMO Roles

2 guides

Diagram-style cover showing an old domain controller being retired: roles moving to a new DC, graceful demotion, then metadata and DNS cleanup

How to Decommission an Old Domain Controller Safely

Retire an old domain controller without breaking your domain. Pre-checks, moving FSMO/GC/DNS/DHCP roles, graceful demotion, metadata cleanup, and DNS cleanup.

MCSA Guru Team Jun 30, 2026 9 min read

Diagram-style cover showing the five FSMO roles split across forest-wide and domain-wide scopes, with arrows for transfer and seize between two domain controllers

Pillar Guide

Windows Server & Active Directory

How to Transfer or Seize FSMO Roles in Active Directory

Learn the 5 FSMO roles, when to transfer them gracefully vs seize them after a DC failure, and how to do both with ntdsutil and PowerShell — safely.

MCSA Guru Team Jun 2, 2026 10 min read