How do you know if the GC has been copied to another server

[Nathan Simpson]

Hi,

Followed the information on making another server a GC and I was waiting for
the Event ID in the event viewer to say the job was complete but I never saw
it.

Is there another way to see if a GC has been copied from one machine to
another? A registry entry? A particular file?

Thanks

Nathan

 

[Tony Yuhas [MSFT]]

Hi Nathan,

The new GC will not 'advertise' itself as a GC until it
has finished initial replication. You can check this
state using the nltest tool:

nltest /server:{dcname} /dsgetdc:{domainname}

If you see the GC flag listed, you know it's advertising
as a GC.

Hope this helps,
Tony Yuhas
Microsoft
Active Directory Tools

 

[Mike hakopyan]

Hi, I'm having a similar problem. I ran that command and
I do not see the GC listed. Is there a way to manually
force a replication? Under my ntds settings I've selected
this server as a GC...but it's not advertising as such.

any ideas?

 

[Diana Smith [MSFT]]

Hello Mike,

You may see a 1110 event in the Directory Service log. This indicates that
you can set a registry parameter "Global Catalog Delay Advertisement" to
control the length of time before the newly-promoted GC is advertised in
DNS. This parameter should not be used to control advertising as it is
ignored if the value exceeds 300 seconds (5 minutes).

If you wish to promote the GC immediately without enforcing this
precondition, set the registry variable
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ Current Control Set \ Services \ NTDS \
Parameters \
Global Catalog Delay Advertisement (sec) to a DWORD value of 0.

The GC will be promoted on the next attempt to check preconditions. This
value can also be set to the maximum number of seconds that the DSA will
wait before promoting to a GC.

Thank You.

Diana.