Authentication Redundancy

[serhino320]

Hello All!

I hope my question is clear. I have a single Windows 2000 server (Standard) in my department set up with AD and managing roughly 50 XP Pro client machines. It's used mainly for Group Policy and File and Printer shares. I had an issue last week in which my server was freezing over the weekend and on Monday mornings no one would be able to print or see server files because the server was not authorizing access. I've solved that problem, but would like to prevent this scenario in the future. If I had a second server in the department whose sole purpose was to function as a secondary point of authentication in the event of my main PDC crashing, what does this second server need to "BE"? I think I'm getting into Replication land here with a second DC, but have practically zero knowledge with a multiple server environment. What I want is for a second machine to jump right into the role of authentication as if my PDC was still up and running. My users would still gain access to network resources until I fixed the PDC that is off-line. Any insight would be appreciated!

serhino

 

[rpiver]

I would run join it to the existing Domain. Run DCpromo on it to make it a Domain Controller as well and enable the Global Catalog on it. This way your users are sure to get authenticated to the network.

As for the printers, I'm not sure how to replicate that off of the top of my head. I know you could set them up on that Server as well and have them as a fall back.

If you want to actually replicate the users files, for instance if you need to take the primary server offline, then setup DFS with replication. Here is a link for some basics on DFS

http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBM/tip6300/rh6329.htm

I hope this helps,
Rad Piver

http://www.globalstrata.com

 

[Seaspray0]

Yes you are going to deal with some replication if you make both PC's domain controllers, however if both computers are in the same site location, then you will have little to do in reguards to "ajusting" the replication. The only time you really need to consider replication issues is when you have a domain controller in another site that has a slow network connection to your current site. The windows help gives some good examples of setting up replication between sites and also explains the replication between domain controllers in the same site. I think the issue you may want to consider more is maintaining an operational print server/domain controller with the two PC's you have. If you want the best redundancy for your domain services, you might consider running both in a cluster. Both PC's will then act together... if one fails, the other maintains the services. For that, I suggest you purchase a storage unit with hard drives in it to share between the cluster.

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