How Do I Get My Domain Controllers To Replicate

[dgrams]

We are on a Win2000 domain :sigh:

 

and we are going to be upgrading soon, but I'm not holding my breath for it to happen in the next month or two... anyways...

 

1 of our 3 domain controllers is not replicating with the other 2.

Domain Controller 1 = dns server (seems to be working fine)

Domain Controller 2 = replicates with Server 1, but is not brining down policies created on Server 1

Domain Controller 3 = doesnt replicate with either 1 or 2

 

I notice that when I run ping commands to the 3 servers by name, my responses are show as:

 

PINGING server1.domain [ip address] with 32 bytes of data

 

PINGING server2.domain [ip address] with 32 bytes of data

 

but when I ping the 3rd server, which is the one that isn't replicating at all, I get

PINGING server3 [ip address] with 32 bytes of data (its missing the 'domain')

 

 

Is this telling me that something is hosed in the DNS table, and possibly a reason why this DC is not replicating?

 

If so, can someone expalin how to go into the DNS and correct it for this server?

I've seen my boss go in and work in DNS, but I dont think I've ever done it myself.

 

And my boss has been sitting on this for weeks and won't look into it and I'm getting fustrated because I need this DC to be replicating. I think it is causing a great many of problems for us....

 

 

Thanks in advance for any tips you can share.

[RSoP_Robbers]

We are on a Win2000 domain :sigh:

 

and we are going to be upgrading soon, but I'm not holding my breath for it to happen in the next month or two... anyways...

 

1 of our 3 domain controllers is not replicating with the other 2.

Domain Controller 1 = dns server (seems to be working fine)

Domain Controller 2 = replicates with Server 1, but is not brining down policies created on Server 1

Domain Controller 3 = doesnt replicate with either 1 or 2

 

I notice that when I run ping commands to the 3 servers by name, my responses are show as:

 

PINGING server1.domain [ip address] with 32 bytes of data

 

PINGING server2.domain [ip address] with 32 bytes of data

 

but when I ping the 3rd server, which is the one that isn't replicating at all, I get

PINGING server3 [ip address] with 32 bytes of data (its missing the 'domain')

 

 

Is this telling me that something is hosed in the DNS table, and possibly a reason why this DC is not replicating?

 

If so, can someone expalin how to go into the DNS and correct it for this server?

I've seen my boss go in and work in DNS, but I dont think I've ever done it myself.

 

And my boss has been sitting on this for weeks and won't look into it and I'm getting fustrated because I need this DC to be replicating. I think it is causing a great many of problems for us....

 

 

Thanks in advance for any tips you can share.

 

Do you have a managed service or is it an in hour affair?

If you have a service contract etc, I would perhaps get the company in to take a look.

 

It sounds like a DNS configuration issue however, once that is fixed, repairing the replication can be a nightmare.

 

I'm guessing you are seriously suffering with group policy issues?

 

 

I would do as Galway has suggested and get as much information as possible before you try anything!

[srochford]

On server3, go to a command prompt and type:

ipconfig /all

this will give you all the information about the machine's network settings. What DNS server is shown? You don't say which of your DCs is running DNS but the answer you get should point to the server(s) running DNS. If it doesn't then fixt that and try a:

ipconfig /registerdns

Check the event log after a few minutes - there should be no errors (you should see a message saying that it's trying to register; there isn't anything if it does registger but there will be messages if it fails)

 

If the server is hopelessly out of sync then it may not be possible to get it to re-sync (and you may not want to - you could get out of date objects moving back to the "good" DC1). The simplest thing to do is run dcpromo on the "broken" DC to take it down to a standalone server. Wait about 15 minutes and then run dcpromo again to make it back to a DC. This generally fixes problems (and is non-destructive as long as 1 DC is working well and can be located by DNS)

[dgrams]

On server3, go to a command prompt and type:

ipconfig /all

this will give you all the information about the machine's network settings. What DNS server is shown? You don't say which of your DCs is running DNS but the answer you get should point to the server(s) running DNS. If it doesn't then fixt that and try a:

ipconfig /registerdns

Check the event log after a few minutes - there should be no errors (you should see a message saying that it's trying to register; there isn't anything if it does registger but there will be messages if it fails)

 

If the server is hopelessly out of sync then it may not be possible to get it to re-sync (and you may not want to - you could get out of date objects moving back to the "good" DC1). The simplest thing to do is run dcpromo on the "broken" DC to take it down to a standalone server. Wait about 15 minutes and then run dcpromo again to make it back to a DC. This generally fixes problems (and is non-destructive as long as 1 DC is working well and can be located by DNS)

 

Thanks.

Under the Windows 2000 IP Configuration results, I do get my domain listed after Primary DNS Suffix.

But under the ethernet adapter for Connection-Specific DNS Suffix, the domain is NOT listed there.

 

An earlier poster also mentioned demoting the domain controller.

I would have no problem doing that, but I thought that if the server isn't able to be communicated to by the other domain controllers, you will have a hard time running dcpromo to take it out of the mix.

I dont want to create any more headaches than I have...

 

But yes, I do have 2 of the 3 DCs talking okay to eachother.