Main DC Crashed , Secondary running , Problems With EXCHANGE (resolved).

It was a great day to whoop somebody’s ass yesterday !!

Our Main Domain Controller that has all the FSMO Roles assigned to it & the [global catalog] , decided that Moody [me] has to stay late @ work and crashed it self ….

I tried to Boot it up but it didn’t want to … Hard disk Failure !!! fucking Maxtor’s supplied by default with Dell’s Machines …

Anyhow , now i still had the secondary Domain Controller which has the following network services( Active Directory , local DNS , DHCP ) .

Our Workstations were able to connect and get login information out of the Secondary DC upon releasing/renewing the IP and flushing the DNS …

The Main problem was the EXCHANGE SERVER[ Email Server ] , The store information service wouldn’t start because it was trying to reach the Master DC which is the global catalog server ,(Exchange servers uses only domain controllers that are global catalog servers) & has the following FSMO roles :

1. Schema Master Role
2. Domain Naming Master Role
3. RID Master Role
4. PDC Emulator Role
5. Infrastructure Master Role

More information about FSMO roles can be found @ :
http://www.petri.co.il/understanding_fsmo_roles_in_ad.htm

To check Which domain controller has what role :
There are a number of ways you can determine which DCs are FSMO roles holders on your network, but the simplest is to install the Support Tools from the \Support\Tools folder on your product CD and type netdom query fsmo at a command prompt…

The Previous action is well explain @
http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/06/15/fsmo.html

Now back to our Case:

I tried to shift the fsmo roles to the secondary controller through the GUI by right-click the Active Directory Schema icon again and press Operation Masters.
( http://www.petri.co.il/transferring_fsmo_roles.htm )

But this didn’t work for one reason and that is it needs the Master DC (the crashed one) …

for such Cases Administrators should transfer or seize the FSMO Roles via Ntdsutil…within the command prompt .

But which 1 to use, seize or transfer ?

this should clear any doubts you have in mind …
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255504/

In Our case we’ll use Seize because the Main DC is unrecoverable!

To seize the FSMO roles :
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255504/

another one

http://www.petri.co.il/transferring_fsmo_roles.htm

What about the global catalog server ? how can i assign that to the secondary domain … ?

this should help , Now remember , Exchange servers uses only domain controllers that are global catalog servers.
http://www.petri.co.il/configure_a_new_global_catalog.htm

Please Leave a comment if this was helpfull … thanks .