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Help with Windows 2003 DCs

I have two DCs located at the same site with 250 users. I have noticed that some users are authenticated by DC1 while others by DC2.
1- Can anyone explain what is the criteria of a Windows 2003 to decide which user will be authenticated by which DC? 2- If a user is authenticated by DC1 and this DC has a sudden hardware failure will this user be affected? Will DC2 take over this user without having the user to log off / on?

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kt2003

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Thank you.
You didn't answer my question.
I have two DCs located 'at the same site' with 250 users. I have noticed that some users are authenticated by DC1 while others by DC2.
Can anyone explain what is the criteria of a Windows 2003 to decide which user will be authenticated by which DC?

valicon

Let me break it down a little bit better for you. A client machine be it a workstation or another server will seek the closest DC based upon the subnet that the client machine is in, then the subnet that the DC is in to determine the closest DC. The domain controllers will authenticate the clients as needed, there is no preferred DC that will handle logins. This can be configured by altering the SRV records in DNS but it is not recommended.

Each DC is a peer and if the DC's are in the same domain and same site then there is no specific criteria as to which DC will authenticate which user, other than what I stated above.

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zaedi_ahmed

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