Domain Functional Level Rollback
Till windows server 2008 r2 forest and domain functional level are not possible to downgrade once it s upgraded.
Domain functional level rollback. In these cases you would have to revert to a restore from backup. It is to my knowledge that the domain functional level is not able to be reverted to its previous state unless done so by a system state backup and an authoritative restore. When you deploy a new forest you are prompted to set the forest functional level and then set the domain functional level.
You can set the domain functional level to a value that is higher than the forest functional level but you cannot set the domain functional level to a value that is lower than the forest functional level. Active directory functional level rollback is not a substitution for these core recommendations. With starting windows server 2008 r2 you can downgrade forest and function.
Well it s not a problem if you properly plan you active directory upgrades. Recently i started building up a new test lab with microsoft server 2016. This was not possible before with previous versions of windows.
Now we can use set adforestmode to downgrade the functional level of the forest. With the windows server 2008 r2 operating system the changes to domain functional levels and to forest functional levels can be rolled back. Also right click on the active directory domains and trusts and select the raise forest functional level.
The current domain functional level must be set to windows server 2008 r2. The domain functional level dfl for all the domains in a forest has to be raised first before you can raise the forest functional level ffl. However the rollback can be performed in only the specific scenarios that are described in the technet article about the active directory functional levels.
In this lab i had the domain and forest functional level set to server 2016. You must be using an account with enterprise administrator or equivalent privileges to perform these actions. Once we run this command it will prompt for the domain name.