Transferring DC Roles..

[Alex Young]

Dear All,
I have read many post regarding transferring DC roles but
I still cannot piece all the info together...
Here's what I need to do, im sure it's simple...

We have two domain controllers (Win2k A.server),
replication is working o.k. (as far as I know) but the
primary DC needs to be removed from the domain to be re-
loaded.
DNS is only installed on the PDC and also the global
catalog is only on the PDC.
I understand that I need to install and configure DNS on
the BDC and allow dynamic updates and also make the BDC a
global catalog but how do I transfer the other roles? Does
dcpromo transfer these for me once I have sorted DNS/GC?
Also are there implications having two GC on the same
domain whilst I try and remove the PDC?
All help greatly appreciated!!

Alex Young

 

[Simon Geary]

If you only have 2 DC's in your domain you should make both of them a DNS
server and a Global Catalogue. Don't just do it temporarily while you
rebuild one of them, keep this afterwards for redundancy. Having two GC's
will not harm your domain, in fact it is highly recommended that you have
more than one for redundancy.

When you rebuild the first DC, you must run dcpromo on it first to bring it
down to a member server before rebuilding it, this is a very important step.
During the dcpromo process, any FSMO roles held by the server will
automatically be moved to your other DC but it's best to move them manually
beforehand, this kb tells you how to do that.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=255690