Decommision Domain Controller

[Guest]

Hi

I would like to decommision one of our Domain Controllers to be used at a later date in a test environment

Are there any risks involved in this such as corrupting the AD or is there a procedure to be followed for doing this

Thanks
Jo

 

[Joe]

Sorry, realised that I haven't given enough info.

What I would like to do is to create a test environment
where I can test our disaster recovery procedure for our
Exchange server.

My plan is:
1. Create a new DC on the Domain.
2. Remove the DC from the network and place it on a
private network.
3. Attach a W2k server to the private network.
4. Restore Exchange to the W2k server.
--- Assuming the restore works fine ---
5. Return the DC to the corporate network.
6. Decomission the DC.
7. Reformat the restored Exchange server.

If anyone can point me to a detailed procedure for doing
this or something similar I would be very grateful. Any
other advice would be most welcome too.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[Todd hobdey]

I'm sure there are other issues as well, but three come to mind: DNS, FSMO
roles and tombstone age.

The moved domain controller will need a DNS server on the new network that
has the right entries. Your production DCs will also be generating errors
trying to replicate to what is essentially a "down" DC.

When you remove the DC from your production network, you need to make sure
the FSMO roles are all held by other DCs, but in the test environment the
migrated server would need to seize those roles. When you go to put it back
in the production network you'd have role conflicts.

If the moved DC is off the production network for more than the tombstone
age (60 days, I believe), it won't be able to resync with the production
DCs.

Like I said, I'm sure there are more issues than this. The bottom line is I
wouldn't be inclined to try it - I think your chances of screwing up your
production environment are pretty high.

What you might consider instead is to build a test environment from scratch
and use ldifde to export your users and import them into the new
environment.

 

[Guest]

Todd, thanks for the info. Considered using ldifde but
with further research found that we can decommision the
removed dc without bringing it back online using
ntdsutil .

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;216498&Product=win2000

Are there any pitfalls i should be aware of?