need to demote domain controller, will DNS be affected for site?

[geranimo666]

Hello all-

Let me get right to the meat of the situation.

I work at site A, we have 2 Win2k3 servers (domain controllers)present and an entire network beneath it.. Well at site B which is a physically different location there is a domain controller which really was setup in an optimal fashion and when I check my Sites and Services settings for this server, the DC for SiteB is listed under SiteA's subfolder server tree... yet we have many other physical locations and all seem to have a nice consistent structure (they're own site level container - with a break down of domain controllers/global catalog servers beneath it.... except for site B's scenario which I listed above as being configured not to optimal fashion.

Well, I am sending someone to the physical site tomorrow, to demote the DC and then promote it again.. after which I will remove the object from Sites and services from the Site A /server subfolder and create a true Site folder for SiteB then listing it's domain controller within there..

Is this the right way to go? for the past 3 months, this server was facing netlogon issues and certain other member servers that authenticate to it somehow lose connectivity to it as listed in the event logs.. many netlogon service failures...

There are roughly 5 users that work at site B, so my question is, if these users log in and start their work day and then have my technician demote this DC and then eventually dcpromo it again to a DC -what will happen to the users? will they continue to work -will there be DNS issues due to the demotion of the local DC? All the domain controllers including this problematic siteB fall under one domain (single forest) so shouldn't the users maintain their dns/authentication settings because they would replicate to a Domain controller in SiteA (my local site)... please correct me if I'm wrong here...

thank you for any info you can provide at all

geranimo

 

[Cstorms]

Are any of these machines child domains or are they just Domain Controllers that replicate a single AD structure. Is there a reason you are reluctant to manually create a seperate site and simply move this server into that site?

If this machine is used by these user machines for DNS (assuming this is true), they will lose pretty much all functionality beyond local tasks and maybe mapped drives. If they got logged off, used any form of Exchange functionality or any program that requires domain based authentication you will be up a creek until you go through the hassle of getting this DC up a replicated to.

It seems like this may not be the best path to take IMO.


Cory