I have found that with in my Active Directory (Windows 2003 Interm), there are 4 DC and each is a GLOBAL CATALOG SERVER. So in theory any should be able to authenticate users.
that our XP Clients have a lengthy HOSTS and LMHOSTS file (that are both the same entries)
My concern is that I had an issue with one of my AD Servers (the one that hold the PDC ROLE) and it was down for a few hours, I think the entries in the HOSTS/LMHOSTS did not help my issue. I was able to swap the roles form this server to one of the alternative ones, though some XP systems still did not want to play nice.
192.168.1.2 "BDC_NT \0x1b" #PRE
192.168.1.2 AD-PDC #PRE #DOM:BDC_NT
192.168.1.3 AD-BDC1 #PRE #DOM:BDC_NT
192.168.1.4 AD-BDC2 #PRE #DOM:BDC_NT
192.168.1.5 AD-BDC3 #PRE #DOM:BDC_NT
Would these entries hinder the users ability to connect to servers and authenticate with the Global Catalogs when that Entry for the first line is referencing a server that is the one that when t off line? It looks like that would over-ride some if not all the other Domain Controllers on the network and cause issues with people trying to log into the systems.
Am I close or way off base on this one? I have always been the type to keep a really clean HOSTS and LMHOSTS files and let the DNS and WINS take care of the resolutions so that systems can change in such a case.