impact on AD if former AD server not clean in metadata

[Choy.y.w.]

Dear people,

Got a question. It is alright or safe to not perform a metadata clean up on
the AD to remove DC from records referring to the former DC which no longer
exist in the networks? Been told by friends it is alright to leave it alone.
Is this true ?

Been getting entries that replication fails & KCC errors in the server logs.

Regards,
yw.choy

 

[Florian Frommherz [MVP]]

Howdie!

Got a question. It is alright or safe to not perform a metadata clean up
on the AD to remove DC from records referring to the former DC which no
longer exist in the networks? Been told by friends it is alright to leave
it alone. Is this true ?

Why is it, you do *not* want to perform the metadata cleanup? As you already
stated, other DCs that have replication connections to the failed DC will
constantly write event log messages to the eventlog. I, personally, wouldn't
want that as that spams the eventlog - in case there's a serious issue,
you'd have to dig through all that mud before you get the entries really
interesting to you. Other than that, it doesn't harm to have the metadata
still around - given that all DNS references to that DC have been removed.

Cleaning up the metadata isn't much of a deal. In fact, it takes you ten
minutes (while reading the KB article).

Cheers,
Florian

 

[Paul Bergson [MVP-DS]]

You are correct clean it up. You won't be able to upgrade AD until things
are harmoneous.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216498

--
Paul Bergson
MVP - Directory Services
MCTS, MCT, MCSE, MCSA, Security+, BS CSci
2008, 2003, 2000 (Early Achiever), NT4

http://www.pbbergs.com

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[Choy.y.w.]

Thank you everyone for the reply. Was just checking & now I know it is
better to perform a metadata cleanup. Thank for the advise.

 

[Meinolf Weber [MVP-DS]]

Hello Choy.y.w.,

If an old DC is in the database you will get errors like you see now. So
remove it from the database, to get your database correct. The event viewer
should be as clean as possible so you can identify errors really easy.

See here about removal from the database etc.:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555846/en-us

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
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[Hank Arnold]

You are correct clean it up. You won't be able to upgrade AD until things
are harmoneous.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216498

While this is a good article, my personal favorite is the one from Dan
Petri (http://www.petri.co.il/delete_failed_dcs_from_ad.htm). It not
only has step by step instructions, it also has screen shots for each
step. This is the guide I use whenever I have to remove a failed DC...

--

Regards,
Hank Arnold
Microsoft MVP
Windows Server - Directory Services
http://mypcassistant.blogspot.com/