replication-2 domains 2 locations

[4johnny]

I work for a company that has 2 domains, one domain resides in the east coast office (where I am) and the 2nd domain is in the midwest. The east coast office has 1 DC, 1 Exchange server, and 1 file server with about 40 users. The midwest office is larger with 3 DCs, 1 exchange server and a few other file servers. The east coast office used to replicate with midwest DC2 which was taken offline awhile ago and is basically decomissioned at this point. We have
been getting the following event log errors on our DC:

1)The File Replication Service is having trouble enabling replication from DC02 to DC01 for

c:\windows\sysvol\domain using the DNS


2)The Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC) has detected problems with the following directory partition.
Directory partitionC=midwest,DC=com
There is insufficient site connectivity information in Active Directory Sites and Services for the KCC to create a spanning tree replication topology. Or, one or more domain
controllers with this directory partition are unable to replicate the directory partition information. This is probably due to inaccessible domain controllers.


So I think that we need to remove the replication with DC2 from AD SITES & SERVICES/NTDS. When I look under our NTDS settings it looks like we are currently setup to replicate with DC2 and DC3. So it looks like if i just remove DC2 from this list then we would still be replicating with midwest domain thru DC3.
If we haven't been replicating with this site at all for quite awhile, what would be the ramifications?
would it be as easy as just assigning another server under out NTDS settings (like with midwest DC1) to get replication working again? Would we expect to see a large amount of network traffic as the 2 sites sync up?

Thanks
John

 

[r8j8t]

My initial question here is did the decomession of ur DC was planned or the server was pulled out due to hardware failure etc.

 

[4johnny]

At the midwest site- DC02 had hardware failure and they don't plan to revive it. comunications and relations are poor between the 2 locations and IT expertise is lacking on both sides due to lay offs. I am a junior admin at best trying to keep things working adequately.

 

[Davetoo]

Since DC2 doesn't physically exist anymore, take it out of hte replication process completely. You can then choose to replicate with another, existing, DC if you want.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[4johnny]

I tried to remove DC2 from the replication process (AD SITES & SERVICES/NTDS) but it re-appeared in the list 15minutes later. So I am assuming that it would have to be removed at the midwest server as well?

thanks