PDC Failure Help - Please!!

[Graeme]

Hi Guys,

Ok out on a bit of limb here as Server are not my speciality at all.

Have one of our sites runs their own domain and has two domain controllers; DC01 & DC02 (very original).

DC01 has failed with a corrupted boot drive and just wont come back up, so its going to be a case of change drives and rebuild.

So need some help and guidance please, as I have several options:

1. Leave them running on just the BDC for now - But what are the side effects of not seizing the FSMO roles to this server?

Everyone is logging in fine, and I have managed to put all their shared data
onto an external drive, so there is no major issues at the moment.

2. Rebuild the PDC and add it back to the domain, but I presume I a going to first have to seize the FSMO roles to the current BDC, then add the PDC back as a new server?


The reason I am thinking of just leaving out the PDC now that its failed, is the fact that we may be totally removing domain controllers from sites and getting them to authenticate against our main single domain.

Just a little concerned about going through the FSMO procedure if its going to cause grief unnecessarily.

Thanks in advance for any assistance and advice offered.

[Dave Warren]

In the last episode of

Post by Graeme
Ok out on a bit of limb here as Server are not my speciality at all.
Have one of our sites runs their own domain and has two domain
controllers; DC01 & DC02 (very original).
DC01 has failed with a corrupted boot drive and just wont
come back up, so its going to be a case of change drives and rebuild.

In case you aren't aware, there's no such thing as PDC and BDC (unless
you're still running NT4, in which case all the following answers are
quite different)

Post by Graeme
1. Leave them running on just the BDC for now - But what are
the side effects of not seizing the FSMO roles to this server?

Short term, very little. The PDC emulator is responsible for a few
specific things, time synchronization possibly being the biggest one to
bite you in the short term if DC02's clock isn't the best. Beyond that,
the biggest thing that the PDC emulator does is handle password changes
and lockouts, all of which will work on DC02 as well, but if you had
other DCs, you might see a bit more latency for such things to apply
network-wide than normal.

Outside of that, you won't miss any of the other FSMO roles over the
short term.

That being said, I would seize the roles sooner rather than later --
You'll have to do it eventually, so why wait?

Post by Graeme
Everyone is logging in fine, and I have managed to put all
their shared data
onto an external drive, so there is no major issues at the moment.
2. Rebuild the PDC and add it back to the domain, but I presume
I a going to first have to seize the FSMO roles to the current BDC, then
add the PDC back as a new server?

I would seize the FSMO roles now, get every reference to DC01 cleaned up
as appropriate, then when DC01 comes back up and is online, transfer the
roles back or not as you prefer (it doesn't matter)