NT server - BDC question

[amaru96]

Hi guys, I have my PDC in 1 location and a BDC in another. The location where the BDC is is connected via satellite. Every so often there is a power outage at this site and the satellite goes offline. There is also a W2K file server at that same site. When the satellite goes offline nobody can access any of the shares or printers on the W2K server. I believe it says something like "No logon servers are currently available". I thought the BDC would handle that? Should users be able to access the shares on the W2K server without connection to the PDC?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[jdeane]

can you access the shares via ip address? are you replicating WINS/DNS across the 2 sites?

 

[itsp1965]

If I recall (and it's been awhile), BDCs are there to provide a backup of the NT domain environment, but do not handle authentication requests .. the PDC does. This is why in the case a PDC goes offline for a long time, the BDC would usually promoted to the PDC role and the existing PDC demoted.

 

[AndrewTait]

If I recall (and it's been awhile), BDCs are there to provide a backup of the NT domain environment, but do not handle authentication requests .. the PDC does. This is why in the case a PDC goes offline for a long time, the BDC would usually promoted to the PDC role and the existing PDC demoted.

Not quite true.

BDC's do handle authentication requests, but do not have a writable copy of the SAM database, and therefore cannot allow user creation/deletion/modification. This means that you cannot do even simple things like change passwords, or unlock accounts. It is for this reason, that a BDC should be promoted if a PDC is down for any length of time.

As for the problem, it sounds as though the PC's are all authenticating against the PDC rather than the local BDC. I would look at WINS and DNS as suggested by jdeane.


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[juniper911]

What Andrew has said it true that it looks like your users at that site authenticating against the PDC. One way to test this is when your sat link goes down. Ask a user to log off and see if they can log on again. If they do then it would be that they are authenticating against the BDC and that should mean they should be able to access the network shares too.

If they can't you may need to configure an additional secondary wins server. I think that should resolve the problem.