DC Crashed, Repair? Rebuild? Backup? Upgrade?

[steveJCUK]

Today something strange happened to one of my 3 Windows 2008R2 Servers, strange isn't the work really!

Running VMware.

 

It failed its backup to disk last night,

 

I had errors every 5 or so seconds saying there was no space left on for Active Directory Database, this also refered to only one user, which didn't really stand out for any reason apart from a tweak with SIMS earlier on todo with logins...

Another message suggested it had stopped replicating.

 

All pointing to a pretty unhappy DC!

 

Anyway space was ok, around 20GB min free on each..

 

I gave it a restart as planned anyway today after installing some updates.

On coming back to life, I got recovery mode for Server.. and a quick flash of a blue screen.

 

The DC is my 2nd DNS, DHCP, my only WSUS, WDS and a couple of other roles.

 

Do I:

 

1. Restore from backup, demote and promote DC

2. Build a new one and use this opportunity to implement a 2012 server well I'm at it, maybe to a spare VM the old DC for some of the setting etc.

3. New install of 2008 and play it safe?

 

Id be interested to hear your suggestions, right now I would be hoping on the backup route to be honest.

This is a worst case scenario assuming I cannot get the old DC working tomorrow.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Michael]

Press F8 at Startup and disable auto restart on failure to see what error the BSOD gives you.

 

You need to establish whether it's hardware related, irrelevant if it's a virtual instance or not (depending on your setup).