We are currently on a 2008 Domain Functional Level on our Active Directory Domain and Epicor 9 is running on a 2008r2 OS server. We are going to have to raise our Domain Functional Level to 2016 or higher so we can use Office 365 and other things. Is anyone out there running Epicor9 on a higher AD Domain Functional Level than 2008 and if so, are there any “gotchas” we need to know about before raising the level?
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I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not supported by Microsoft. There are a lot of differences from 2008 R2 to 2016. Especially authentication and domain replication changes. Epicor itself would probably run fine (it’s not aware of the domain function level) but you have the potential for some major underlying windows problems.
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I don’t have any specific knowledge of running E9 with 2016 level DCs but assuming their plan is to continue to run E9 on their existing 2008 box (not great for well known/discussed reasons) I don’t know of an issue connecting a Server 2008 machine for a 2016 Domain? As I say, that doesn’t mean E9 wouldn’t have problems but AFAIK it was never not supported by MS to have 2008 Servers with DCs running 2016?
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Microsoft says don’t do it… guess it’s up to you how much risk you want to take. There are major authentication changes from 2008 to 2016. The ciphers change and old machines can lose the ability to authenticate. If you’re ok with that risk then do it.
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I stand corrected, my memory of 2008R2 with 2016 was from long ago when 2008R2 was still in Extended Support and they had not significantly changed things in 2016. I do see after looking it up that they really started to lock things down between 2020-2022 and that those would likely break the older’s ability to function fully/properly.
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