DC removal - offline

[Guest]

Hello

It seems that our remote site DC is down! It could be two things, corrupt OS
and possible raid controller problem.
Typically we would remove the DC by running dcpromo.
We were planning to remove this DC form the network anyways and I am
wondering if this is possible without attaching the down DC back to the
network?
Any tips or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

Mark Clark

 

[Tom Rogers]

My thoughts: If there are any roles assigned to this DC, they need to be
assigned to other DCs first. Also any services such as WINS, DHCP, DNS.

Then you could just remove the DC from AD by deleting the computer from the
AD listing.

-Tom

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the information.
I have not had to get intot he heart of AD before, hwo can I verify the
roles of this down server?

 

[Tom Rogers]

http://www.petri.co.il/transferring_fsmo_roles.htm

and

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313994

-Tom

 

[Guest]

Thanks! To be on the safe side, I am opening a case with PSS.
I would hate to crush the network and be accoutnable

 

[Paul Bergson]

If the dc is dead then you will need to do metadata cleanup.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=216498

Once completed run dcdiag and then you can transfer any roles listed.

Role transfer, forcing
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;255504


Run diagnostics against your Active Directory domain.

If you don't have the tools installed, install them from your server install
disk.
d:\support\tools\setup.exe

Run dcdiag and netdiag in verbose mode.

If you download a gui script I wrote it should be simple to set and run. It
also has the option to run individual tests without having to learn all the
switch options.

The script is at http://pbbergs.dynu.com/windows/windows.htm, download it
and save it to c:\program files\support tools\

Just select both dcdiag and netdiag make sure verbose is set. (Leave the
default settings for dcdiag as set when selected)

When complete search for fail, error and warning messages.


--


Paul Bergson MCT, MCSE, MCSA, CNE, CNA, CCA

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Hank Arnold]

Don't you have to clean up AD to completely remove a DC that hasn't been
DCPROMO'd???

 

[Jorge de Almeida Pinto]

if you just shutdown a DC and not demote it, you need to cleanup its
metadata. There is more to it then only deleting its computer account
also see: http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/jorge/archive/2005/12/03/213.aspx