I'm in the process of replacing our legacy domain controllers to Windows Server 2016 Standard running on VMware 6.7 hosts. The existing DCs are running Windows Server 2003 R2 with SP2 and Windows Server 2008 with SP2 on physical Dell servers that will be retired. Forest Functional and Domain Functional levels are all Server 2003. Prior to promoting the VM running Windows Server 2016 Standard to a DC and GC, I need to remove an old orphaned domain controller that failed about a year back but the metadata was never removed. I have read several articles that provide the steps to remove the old DC that is dead/offline by running metadata cleanup, remove the DC from Active Directory Sites and Services along with any remaining DNS records.
My question is regarding a Microsoft script that I located that will perform the metadata cleanup automatically and it appears to work in my current setup based on what I've read. Link is attached below. To further complicate my setup is that my AD consists of two (2) AD sites that are connected via secure VPN but are using separate subnets. All online DCs are also GCs and run DNS in AD-Integrated mode. AD health is fine other than the offline DC that I need to purge.
Does the fact that I have two (2) sites matter as long as they can see each other and replication is currently working for the online DCs?
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/d31f091f-2642-4ede-9f97-0e1cc4d577f3/
Thanks for any input.
Ken