I'm guessing the server that went offline was your DHCP server and you have no DHCP failover.
David Lum // SYSTEMS ENGINEER NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION (Desk) 971.222.1025 // (Cell) 503.267.9764 From: Reimer, Mark [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 6:15 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Domain controllers, what is supposed to happen. Sorry, long email. Windows 2003 Native Domain, two domain controllers, server1 and server2. Workstations are primarily XP, some Windows 7. Other servers (file server, email etc) are all Windows 2003. We have about 150 workstations. We have AD DNS, and WINS. Server1 has FSMO roles Infrastructure Master, PDC Emulator, RID Master. Server2 has FSMO roles Domain Naming Master, Schema Master. Both are GC's. In the DHCP settings workstations get both server's IP's as DNS. Server2 is listed first, then server1. Primary WINS server is server1, secondary is Server2. Last night Server1 went down. It was off hours, but I got a call from some late night worker (using XP), saying they couldn't do anything. Couldn't reach any of the servers, or internet. I was able to get the server going again (bad memory chip, so I just took it out). I thought that if one server went down, the DNS/WINS look up would go to the other server. But it might be slower (note, I didn't try any of this, just going on what the user said). Comments? If I didn't get Server1 running again, what should I have done? I assume I should do the following. 1. Seize the FSMO roles from server1, and put them on server2. 2. Change DHCP so Primary WINS server is server2. Maybe even take out Server1 as DNS/WINS possibilities. Then work on getting Server1 running again, or replacing it. Did I miss anything? Thanks for any help and insight you can give. Mark ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
