Windows 2000 AD and intra-site replication.

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Guest

I am currently setting up a windows 2000 domain in a lab scenario. I am
curious to know if I have a PDC and a BDC within the same site/same subnet
how would I go about setting up the replication between the two? Do you just
run DCpromo on the BDC and during the installation join it to the same
domain/same forest and that will set up the replication? Or do you need to
take further steps? I appreciate any feedback. Thanks
 
Try to forget about the concept of PDC and BDC, they don't mean anything
when talking about Windows 2000 domains. But the answer is yes, you just
need to dcpromo the second server to become a domain controller in the
existing domain and the KCC will automatically create replication links
without any manual intervention. When the second DC is in place, you can run
repadmin /showreps on each DC to check that the replication partners have
automatically been created.
 
Thanks Simon. I thought the KCC would configure everything when you add a
second DC. I am guessing when I do this on the second DC, it will also go
ahead and create an exact duplicate of the DNS entries that my first domain
controller has? Thanks for the feedback.
 
If you are using AD integrated DNS (as is normally recommended) then making
the second DC a DNS server is easy, and the records will just replicate over
from the first DC.
 
Gotcha, Thanks.

Simon Geary said:
If you are using AD integrated DNS (as is normally recommended) then making
the second DC a DNS server is easy, and the records will just replicate over
from the first DC.
Click to expand...
 
Ben,

Please remember that Active Directory replication comes in two flavors:
Intra-Site and Inter-Site.

Intra-Site replication is the replication that happens between Domain
Controllers that are located in the same Site ( as set up in the Active
Directory Sites and Services MMC ). Also, remember that replication is
based on incoming objects. You will see this very clearly when you install
the Support Tools from the WIN2000 Service Pack CD-Media and run repadmin
/showreps and repadmin /showconn. Furthermore, please note that there are
three Naming Contexts, or Partitions, that are replicated: the Schema NC,
the Configuration NC and the Domain NC. The first two are replicated to all
Domain Controllers in the Forest. The Domain NC is replicated only to the
Domain Controllers in that specific Domain.

Inter-Site replication is the replication that happens between Domain
Controllers that are located in different Sites. Essentially what happens
is that the Intra-Site happens in all Sites. One of the Domain Controllers
in each Site is what is called a Bridgehead Server ( or BHS for short ).
The BHS in Site1 and the BHS in Site2 are the only two Domain Controllers
that will participate in the Inter-Site replication.

When you run dcpromo on your other WIN2000 Server ( and, thus, taking it
from a Member Server to a Domain Controller ) you will notice that it will
replicate the three Naming Contexts that I mentioned above. It goes by
pretty quickly, though, so it is easy to miss.

In WIN2000 and WIN2003 there is no longer the concept of PDC and BDC ( well,
let's just keep it really simple ). In WINNT 4.0 those two terms had very
specific meanings. The Primary Domain Controller was the only Domain
Controller that had a writable SAM. So, you had to create user account
objects and the like on that specific machine. If you foolishly did this on
a BDC ( which has a 'read only' copy of the SAM ) the end effect would be
that you would not have that specific user account object rather quickly.
In this sense, these terms do not apply to WIN2000 or WIN2003 anymore - like
Simon suggested.

In Active Directory all Domain Controllers have a writable database ( which
is actually a file called ntds.dit ). Thus, you can create any object on
any Domain Controller and the replication will make sure that all of the
appropriate Domain Controller have it!

--
Cary W. Shultz
Roanoke, VA 24012
Microsoft Active Directory MVP

http://www.activedirectory-win2000.com
http://www.grouppolicy-win2000.com
 
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