I recently switched a small office (12-14 workstations and a server) over to some newer server hardware. In the process of the switch we upgraded from Windows Server 2000 to Windows Server 2008 R2.
Due to simplicity and the administrative demands of the office being relatively low we changed over from domain controller to a workgroup as well. With hardware and software that is approximately 10 years newer we are now seeing some speed decreases across the network during peak hours and occasionally when the office only has 1 or 2 workstations up.
Would the switch from a domain controller to a workgroup result in a significant loss in performance?
Best Answer
First off, why would you move them off of the domain? 12-14 workstations can still be managed much easier with group policy and centralized authentication. It just seems like you created a whole lot more work for yourself.
As for performance, yes there can be some drastic performance issues. This is especially true if you converted your users' profiles or kept them using domain profiles. There are probably lots of things left over pointing to a DC which need to timeout. You're going to have to redo all of the profiles, which is not a small amount of work.
Do you still have your DC around? If so, spark it up. Join the new server to the domain, dcpromo, transfer your fsmo roles, demote the old DC, redirect DNS to the new server, and rejoin all of the computers back to the domain. It's much better than any alternative.