Consequences of domain-controller going down?

[Anders Biro]

Hello, I have a network consisting of two 2000 domain controllers (and one
Exchange 2000) and recently one of them went down and the whole network went
berzerk.
It is true that the faulty server did possess most if not all FSMO-roles but
to my understanding the consequences should not be that fatal.
I was under the impression that users should still be able to log in and the
immediate impact only shows when administrative configuration of AD is
required?
That is, casual user interaction like logging on, reading mail and accessing
files should not be affected or am I completely wrong?

/Regards Anders

 

[Frankster]

Hello, I have a network consisting of two 2000 domain controllers (and one
Exchange 2000) and recently one of them went down and the whole network
went berzerk.
It is true that the faulty server did possess most if not all FSMO-roles
but to my understanding the consequences should not be that fatal.
I was under the impression that users should still be able to log in and
the immediate impact only shows when administrative configuration of AD is
required?
That is, casual user interaction like logging on, reading mail and
accessing files should not be affected or am I completely wrong?

/Regards Anders

If you mean that you think users should still be able to authenticate and
logon with only one DC, you are right.

Almost certainly, in your case, the FSMO DC was running some other required
services that were not duplicated on the other DC. DNS maybe?

-Frank

 

[Danny Sanders]

Did the second DC have DNS set up on it?

Were the clients pointed to it?


hth
DDS W 2k MVP MCSE

 

[Anders Biro]

Yes, but maybe it was not set up properly. I take it as correctly configured
domain-controllers have some kind of semi-redundace since basic network
services do not come to an halt?

 

[Anders Biro]

Btw, the primary controller was Windows Server 2003 while the other was
Windows 2000.
Would this have a different impact compared to a homogenous environment?