What's the upgrade path for ADFS 2.1 to 3.0 (Server 2012 to 2012 R2)

Question

I have several domain controllers running Windows Server 2012 with a domain and forest functional levels at Windows Server 2012. Two of the DCs are running ADFS (2.1) in a farm for users in my organization to authenticate to Office 365. I'm in the process of replacing my domain controllers with Windows Server 2012 R2; however, I haven't been able to find a "best practice" method of upgrading ADFS. The only process I've seen posted online basically tears down ADFS and sets it back up from scratch, but I'd like to avoid that if possible to minimize down time for users.

Solution

The migration guide suggests exporting the current config and importing it to a parallel install. You can then point users at it. Therefore, downtime is negligible. There is no tearing down involved.

Please see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn486815.aspx

Comments

[mfinni]

If the answers you were provided help you with your question, you should select one as an accepted answer.

[Techist]

Unfortunately the new ADFS behaves much differently from previous versions. For instance, ADFS 2.0 and 2.1 used IIS; however, 3.0 uses some other service to publish the HTTPS site. This creates an additional challenge when setting up publication rules for your firewall. I would like to be able to accomplish this without the additional VMs for the web application proxy servers. I'm trying to avoid VM sprawl.

[maweeras]

I am sorry but I don't understand your firewall question. Can we track that in a different question? Initial question of migration path is answered IMO.