I have many DCs but only the single root DC at the HQ office.
We are a single domain environment
DNS is AD integrated.
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Root Domain Controller Clustering
Our root DC for our domain has an issue if the power fails to the server room. It is very rare that this occurs but it has in the past and this is the result I get on my root DC.
It will boot up and allow you to get to the CTRL-ALT-DEL screen where you can log on however it will never log on as long as the NIC is plugged in. I need to unplug the NIC, boot up the server, log in and then I can plug the NIC back in and power up the rest of my servers.
What I'd like to do besides troubleshoot the prior issue is to build a second DC in the HQ office that can boot all the way through and in the case of the root DC having issues can handle the other roles that the root DC is handling.
Is that possible and what must I do to this other DC so that the rest of my network can come up in the event of a power failure?
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Answers
I will be setting up a second server as a DC in the site office. We just don't have many physical servers so I might need to promote a VM. I've heard good and bad, perhaps since this is technically a backup DC at this point it won't matter. It does need to boot independent of any other server in the event of a major power outage and a DC with the GC should have no problem doing that. We'll simply start it in advance of all other VMs.
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by: mkline71Posted on 2009-03-13 at 11:40:37ID: 23882322
You don't need to setup a cluster for domain controllers.
So here you would build another Windows 2003 server and promote that box to be an additional domain controller in your domain.
Put it in the same AD site as the first DC. You will also want to install DNS and make it a global catalog.
Not sure how your DNS is setup now but Active Directory Integrated DNS is what I'd go with.
Do you currently only have one DC in your environment?
Thanks
Mike