Exchange 2007 with Windows 2008 and Windows 2003 AD controller 2

[hkxuser]

Hi all. Here's my situation. I installed Exchange 2007 on a Windows 2008 x64 stand alone server, which is part of a Windows 2008 domain. After the fact, I realized I needed another AD controller and normally I would have went with another Windows 2008 box. In this case, however, I needed to have a Windows 2003 box because we needed a server to run Blackberry Enterprise server 4.x and that only runs on Windows 2003. The functional level of the domain was at Windows 2003, so I went ahead and set up a Windows 2003 box and made it an AD controller. All went well and there were no issues.

Recently, we had to power down the Windows 2008 x64 AD for a half an hour for some hardware installation. I figured this would be no big issue, as the Windows 2003 AD would handle authentication while the Windows 2008 AD was down. Things did not work out as I expected. All of my Exchange users were unable to use email, and were continually prompted with login boxes for authentication until I brought the Windows 2008 AD back on line. Can anybody tell me why things did not work as I expected? Is what I'm trying to do a supported configuration?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[ShackDaddy]

The reason why is because the Win2008 DC holds all the FMSO roles and may have also been the only Global Catalog server. If it was the only GC, then the things you mentioned would have failed, since it's mandatory for Exchange to be able to communicate with a domain GC at all times.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[hkxuser]

Well that makes a ton of sense. I will make the Windows 2003 DC a GC and see if that fixes my issue. Thanks!

 

[Zelandakh]

You have 2 DCs which is for redundancy. 2 GCs would also be redundancy so when you take 1 down you still have 1.

 

[hkxuser]

Making the 2003 AD controller a GC did fix my problem. Thanks much for your help on this one guys.