0

I manage a single domain controller and I am planning to implement a backup domain controller for what are very obvious reasons, but I have some questions:

1) If I switch off my secondary dc and then make changes to my primary DC and take my secondary DC back online, will the backlog of changes be syncd to secondary dc?

2) If I make changes to the secondary DC, will they be syncd in the direction back to primary dc? Or is it always replicated from the primary DC to the secondary DC?

thanks

3
  • 1 yes, 2 yes with some reservations concerning the pdc role.
    – tony roth
    Aug 6, 2010 at 20:45
  • 1
    There is no such thing as primary and backup DCs anymore, that went away with NT4. They are all peers. @tony roth - What are you trying to say there?
    – MDMarra
    Aug 6, 2010 at 20:51
  • haven't really paid much attention to this topic lately, what verision of ad w2k? If so then pre w2k workstations\servers need to contact the pdc to complete the domain join. But if he's talking about a new ad install then yes they are complete peers.
    – tony roth
    Aug 6, 2010 at 20:57

1 Answer 1

1

If this really is Active Directory, then yes the changes will sync. You don't want to leave the DC down a long time, but your net-change directory wise is probably small enough you could get away with it for several hours. AD is a multi-master database, so each DC is a Master database. The old WinNT concept of 'backup domain controller' doesn't apply, everything is a primary. This also means that changes are bi-directional. Either DC can deal with object modification requests and the changes are synced to the other DC.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .