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unrealone1Flag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Domain controller issues

Hi experts,
we have a client with a Dell T610 domain controller and file server + active directory all in one server. Its out of warranty and the o/s is 2003 server.(we had advised updating the warranty ...but alas)
The raid 6 setup has started failing , we had 2 hard drive failures , we have bought replacement 1tb sas drives (72k)
we have inserted one and the raid is rebuilding...dead slow but is working. at the rate its rebuilding it may take 2-3 days
The customer wants us to build a secondary dc now and move active directory across. effectively to another server on the domain
My question to Experts , is ion their experience what do they recommend ..? leave the rebuild ?
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Andrej Pirman
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Well, in current state (RAID 6 rebuild might take a week or more!) it is wise NOT to put adittional stress on this RAID array. So with less stress it would be to setup another (temporary) DC on Server 2003 architecture, so your AD domain and forest schema would not need to be upgraded. That's just a precaution against loosing all users and domain structure.
After RAID rebuilds all failed disks, then you might go with upgrading AD schema to higher level upon adding another server of 2008 or higher technology.
Finally, safely decomission the temporary 2003 server from domain with dcpromo.
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marek1712
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I have promoted a second member server to domain controller.
DNS and AD appear to be replicating ok. I have configured the network card on DC01 with preferred as DC01 DNS AND DC02 DNS, then on DC02 I have done the same with DC02 DNS as preferred etc.

Is there anything else I need to consider? Global catalog etc?
Yes - move the FSMO roles to the new server.
RAID has rebuilt now.

FSMO roles can only reside on one server right?

I think I'll leave the FSMO where they are now.
Yes, they can reside only on one server. If it's working normally then OK.
Out of curiosity - what about RAID controller cache policy and BBU?
Remember that RAID6 can have up to two failed drives.
Yes we did have 2x failed drives.

What do you want to know about cache policy and bbu?
If BBU is alive (because if it died it slows down the controller) and if Write-Back is enabled (which is faster than Write-Through but you may suffer data loss on power outagae)?