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I'm a little unclear as to what happens when a VPN tunnel fails between a primary and secondary Domain controller for an extended period of time. Here is a basic rundown of our environment. We have in our primary location the DC1 we recently moved out customer facing sites and DataBase (the DB is the only server on AD, the rest are DMZ) over to a data center and stood up DC5 (we have other domain controllers in various locations) we have a VPN tunnel between the two locations. I understand that systems will continue to function as normal for short disruptions to the VPN. My question is what if that tunnel is down for a couple of days or even a week. does DC5 continue to work with out DC1? is countdown to failure at some point?

My background is software development, our IT guy says after "some undetermined time" sites would fail to work if the VPN is not active. I am questioning that statement.

Thanks

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My question is what if that tunnel is down for a couple of days or even a week. does DC5 continue to work with out DC1? is countdown to failure at some point?

This is a bit of a loaded question as any answer has to take into account exactly how you have things configured and what services and technologies you've implemented that either rely on AD or are tied to AD (such as DFS, Exchange Server, etc.). Assuming there are no underlying issues and that you've followed best practice in regards to the configuration of your DC's, DNS, and the domain, then things should continue to operate normally for a short period of time. The list of possible minor issues is too long to detail in an answer (changes made to the same object on both sides of the VPN while the VPN is down, etc.), but suffice it to say that none of them are critical failure type issues. The real "countdown to failure" is the "countdown" to the TSL (Tombstone Lifetime), after which point you can't bring the disconnected DC back online (at least not without introducing a major problem). I've recently had a client that had a DC in a remote site go down for 2 weeks with no ill effect.

Your IT guy should be able to give you specific details about exactly what he thinks is going to fail and if he can't then he's probably blowing smoke.

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