How to promote additional Domain controller in W2K3

[mhburney]

Hi,

I find it very weird that there is not much info avail. for how to promote an additional domain controller to Primary domain controller in Windows 2003 environment.

Am dying to know how to do this...might freak out on the day of recovery so please help..a step by step guide be really Nice!.

Cheers

 

[58sniper]

There's no info because there's no such thing as a PDC in Windows 2003.

To promote a member server to a domain controller, run dcpromo.

[google]promote domain controller[/google]

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[mhburney]

But you see i want to promote the additional domain controller so that i dont have to create the user accounts again...what i have now is basically a

- windows 2003 server running Active directory as domain controller.
- windows 2003 server running Active directory as additional domain controller.

now say if the first machine which is the domain controller crashes how am i going to recover back?..ideally i would like to simply allow the additional domain controller to take over and even make new user accounts from there. however in current situation if the main domain controller goes down the additional domain controller wont even allow me to make new user account ....any clues?

 

[porkchopexpress]

The two DC's are both equal and should allow you to create accounts on either, there are however a few services called FSMO roles that can cause issues and at this moment probably reside on your first installed DC.

For a description of the roles look here.

http://www.petri.co.il/understanding_fsmo_roles_in_ad.htm