I am new to DC & DNS, I have 10 w2k3 servers running in 2 server cluster located in different parts of the globe. I was one of a 2 administrator team, I'm the software guy, and my associate was the DC/DNS expert. Well he's jumped ship leaving me as the lone admin, and I have very little DC/DNS knowledge.
We are running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 R2.
The servers are configured as stated above in pairs of 2 in active/passive clusters with a common Raid between them. Each server pair is a different domain. Each server in the cluster group is configured as a DC.
The problem: One of the servers (server #1) in one of the groups had a hardware failure. We had a spare server on site and put it in place to revive the cluster. Problem was I needed to deal with the DC/DNS on the remaining cluster server (server #2) to rid it of the failed server before I could configure the spare to assume server 1’s place. I took some advice from a DNS “knowledgeable” person that led me down the wrong path. After doing some web research I now know how I should have proceeded, but that doesn’t help now.
Although I have removed server #1 from the AD and DNS of server #2, I am now having issues on server #2. I can no longer access my DNS or DC security policies. Do not believe ntdsutil can help me at this point (I’ve tried). If I try to bring DC & AD up on the spare server I get an error about being unable to write something to server #2.
I read an article about using esentutl when ntdsutil fails to work. But I have not been able to even find this utility, let alone use it. At this point I’m stuck, since everything I find tells me to use one of those two utilities and nothing is helping.
Short of a complete OS reinstall, can this problem be repaired? About the only other thing I think of doing at this point is backing out the DC & AD on server #2 and rebuild from there. Would this work? Do I need to be this drastic?
Thanks in advance,
Jrtmanmd
We are running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 R2.
The servers are configured as stated above in pairs of 2 in active/passive clusters with a common Raid between them. Each server pair is a different domain. Each server in the cluster group is configured as a DC.
The problem: One of the servers (server #1) in one of the groups had a hardware failure. We had a spare server on site and put it in place to revive the cluster. Problem was I needed to deal with the DC/DNS on the remaining cluster server (server #2) to rid it of the failed server before I could configure the spare to assume server 1’s place. I took some advice from a DNS “knowledgeable” person that led me down the wrong path. After doing some web research I now know how I should have proceeded, but that doesn’t help now.
Although I have removed server #1 from the AD and DNS of server #2, I am now having issues on server #2. I can no longer access my DNS or DC security policies. Do not believe ntdsutil can help me at this point (I’ve tried). If I try to bring DC & AD up on the spare server I get an error about being unable to write something to server #2.
I read an article about using esentutl when ntdsutil fails to work. But I have not been able to even find this utility, let alone use it. At this point I’m stuck, since everything I find tells me to use one of those two utilities and nothing is helping.
Short of a complete OS reinstall, can this problem be repaired? About the only other thing I think of doing at this point is backing out the DC & AD on server #2 and rebuild from there. Would this work? Do I need to be this drastic?
Thanks in advance,
Jrtmanmd