RE: [ActiveDir] GC availability issue?

[Bernard, Aric]

Under normal (what ever that means) circumstances 2 GCs should certainly be able to handle 500 users.     Have you defined subnets for each of your 9 sites?  Are you certain that the clients in question belong to one of the defined subnets? Are your DCs registering all appropriate site coverage records in DNS? Is this usage of remote DCs occurring typically on the workstations first access during/after joining the domain or does it continue after subsequent reboots?   Introducing Windows Server 2003 schema extensions should not cause this problem.   As for the rename error – this could certainly be the result of the system “believing” that its name is a duplicate in the organization due to replication latency based on your site topology.  This of course could be exacerbated by the fact that local systems (the new machines) might be accessing DCs in remote sites.     Aric     From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Burkes, Jeremy [Contractor] Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 11:34 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: [ActiveDir] GC availability issue?   Everyone,             We have an empty root domain and a child domain with approximately 9 or so sites in the forest.  The root domain has 2 DCs (1 GC) and the child domain has 3 DCs (1GC) both of which are located in our main site.  At our main site where I am located we have approximately 500 users.  The best scenario I can give you is we do PC rollouts where we take a large number of PCs 30-50 at a time and rename them with an old extension in the host name then we bring a new machine onto the network with the same name.  Sometimes we get an error saying the computer account already exists in the organization when we try to name the new machine with the same name, but the issue is inconsistent.  I did some traffic sniffing with a PC and found that approximately 50% of the time machines in our site are contacting servers in other site for directory service information instead of our site DCs.  Even machines that have been on the network are not using local site DCs for information all the time but using other site DCs instead.  I am wondering what could be causing this.  This configuration has been static for sometime nothing new has been introduced except for Windows 2003 schema (could this be the cause?).  I think it is because we do not have enough GCs in our site (2), but my boss disagrees.  What does everyone think?   Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeremy Burkes Strategic Systems Programs Management Information Systems Help Desk: 202-764-1442        Work: 202-764-1270 |         Fax: 202-764-1503 [EMAIL PROTECTED]