Secondary DC not responding when Primary DC goes down

[Jorge]

We have a W2K Active Directory domain, we have two DC's,
the First domain controller takes care of AD
authentication etc. When this domain controller goes down
the second domain controller does not take care of
authentication? any idea on this problem?


Thank you,



Jorge

 

[Herb Martin]

We have a W2K Active Directory domain, we have two DC's,
the First domain controller takes care of AD
authentication etc. When this domain controller goes down
the second domain controller does not take care of
authentication? any idea on this problem?

It's almost always a DNS problem. Since it only fails on one
of your DCs, the likely reason is either:

1) the second DC is not a client of the dyanamic DNS zone
that supports your domain

2) The second DC is a client of A DYNAMIC DNS zone
server but the clients aren't using that one and the two
are not properly configured to replicate.

Describe you DNS setup for the zone (Primary, AD-int, Secondary)
and describe the NIC\IP client DNS settings on each DC.


--
DNS
1) Fully replicated & Dynamic for the zone supporting AD
2) All internal DNS client NIC\IP properties must specify SOLELY
that internal, dynamic DNS server (set.)
3) DCs and even DNS servers are DNS clients too -- see #2

Restart NetLogon on any DC if you change any of the above that
affects a DC.

 

[Tomasz Onyszko]

We have a W2K Active Directory domain, we have two DC's,
the First domain controller takes care of AD
authentication etc. When this domain controller goes down
the second domain controller does not take care of
authentication? any idea on this problem?

Do You have DNS with AD data zones on both servers?

 

[Simon Geary]

Make sure the second DC is also a global catalogue server. A GC is required
for logons in native mode.
Also check that the 1st DC is not running the only instance of DNS on your
network.