Migrating Active Directory from 2008 R2 to 2016

For this post I just wanted to note down my thoughts and plan that I recently used to migrate a client from Active Directory 2008 R2 to Active Directory 2016.  For this work the servers involved were four Windows 2008 R2 servers which all ran AD, DNS, DHCP and NPS.  These roles were being migrated to four Windows 2016 servers.  The servers are spread out geographically and are on different networks but are all part of a single AD domain.  All of the servers are Global Catalog servers.  This is not designed to be low-level guide with all the intricate details but more of an overview (with some useful commands thrown in).

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Setup an SMTP open relay between an onsite Windows Server and Office 365

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Problem:
After migrating a client to Office 365 I needed a way of sending email from various applications and devices.  I wanted an open relay for email though an onsite Windows Server to Office 365.

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How to check your DFS backlog

Problem: Sometimes when there is a heavy network load or the fileservers are particularly busy I have noticed that DFS replication items begin to queue and the delay between synchronisation increases.  I wanted to see what was in the DFS replication backlog and see it clear to make sure replication was working.

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