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Need a little info on a Domain Controller Time Server Issue.

Hello to all.

Need a little info on a domain controller issue I had this morning. I had my 2003 Domain controller go off line today. I went in and rebooted it and she came back up. "Thank God"

I have two sites connected with a wirless bridge, and a Domain Controller at each site. I also have an exchange server at the same site as the Primary DC.

The Main DC went off line, Email failed as a result of this I am not sure why. Both DC are DNS servers, I would have expected it to pick up of the other DC.

The Errors in the Event Log point to the Microsoft Time Server not being able to be reached, Since then I added another Outside Time server and resynched, All seems fine.

Is it possible that the DC would have locked or froze or Active Driectrory failed because of the time server issue. I see the logs on the other Domain Controller or mentioning that replication failed as the domain controler was unavailable.

Is there a way to verify my new time server is good, is it possible to add a second.

Please input. Thanks Guys!

tcmadmin

ASKER

Also one other thing, I would have expected email to function properly as it should have been using the other DC for authentication and DNS. The other DC is on a seperate subnet, but it is routed peroperly.

The error in the event log is as follows.

Event Type:      Error
Event Source:      CertSvc
Event Category:      None
Event ID:      44
Date:            10/5/2008
Time:            10:39:08 AM
User:            N/A
Computer:      PSB01
Description:
The "Windows default" Policy Module "Initialize" method returned an error. The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted. The returned status code is 0x8007054b (1355). The Active Directory containing the Certification Authority could not be contacted.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Is it p-ossible to have the certificate authority to be on 2 domain controlers so exchange will stay up if one of them goes down?

Thanks

mikainz

Exchange Server relies on having a Global catalog server beeing online.
Can verify that both DC are global catalog server.
You can check thin in the MMC snap in "Active Directory sites and services"
Right click on the "NTDS settings" object of the server object.

tcmadmin

ASKER

Thank you for the fast response, I did check to see if they where both set as global catalog servers and they both are. Could it have anythting to do with replication time, I have them set to replicate every hour as per default.

JimsZ

should not be anything to do with replication times.

Sounds like only the main domain controller is the certificate authority & the secondary is not allowed to verify certs.

I would definately say this is a certificate issue & not so much as a time or replication issue!

tcmadmin

ASKER

if you have two domain controllers in two sepertate sites, what is best practice for setting the roles for them, should some roles be moved to the secondary domain controller.

Both are set as Global Catologs?

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

tcmadmin

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