Preparing to temporarily remove site from AD domain

Question

We have a remote site that has two domain controllers in addition to the two domain controllers in the main site. We need to take down the link between the two sites for approximately 3 days, however the two sites still need to operate independantly of eachother in this time.

What's the best way to prepare for this? Can I just take the link down for 3 days and everything will just work perfectly, and re-sync when they come back online?

We are going to avoid doing things like domain account changes and password resets while the link is offline.

Answer 1

Yes that should be fine. You will see errors in the event log complaining of inability to replicate from inaccessible domain controllers. Any changes admin initiated or otherwise (such as computer account password changes) will re-sync once it detects the domain controllers are accessible.

The key thing to ensure is that each site has no dependency on the other. For example services such as DHCP, WINS DNS and so on. Are you accessing any standalone DFS file shares or are they domain based DFS file shares? Have you hard coded any applications to use a specific DC or other server located remotely in the other site? etc...