Rebooting domain controller

workaccount

We want to do this over the weekend when all users are at home relaxing or out having a pint enjoying the good weather!

Is there an issues we may run into or should everything run fine again upon reboot?

DublinWriter

workaccount wrote:

We want to do this over the weekend when all users are at home relaxing or out having a pint enjoying the good weather!

Is there an issues we may run into or should everything run fine again upon reboot?

There will be if you have a BDC and it comes up before you boot up the PDC.

My golden rule of system admin is either switch it off/delete it and listen to see if someone screams.

It's always a good idea to reboot NT Servers at least once a month if you can.

Capt'n Midnight

stupid question if I may - If you are applying security patches, you are probably rebooting at least every two months, aren't you ?

check the event log first, in case any thing new there, make sure you have a full backup, like you have every night

Generally speaking I would make sure one DC is live at anyone time. Reboot them one at a time and make sure you can logon through terminal services and quick look at event log before rebooting the next one.

workaccount

We just have one domain controller and a backup. I assume the backup is working off a heartbeat and will take over from the primary when I restart it. Im just hoping everything will be automatic and that it will switch straight back to primary when loaded.

Capt'n Midnight - Things, network wise have been abit disorganized up until now...so in the past, no they haven' been restarted.

DublinWriter

workaccount wrote:

We just have one domain controller and a backup. I assume the backup is working off a heartbeat and will take over from the primary when I restart it.

Nooooooo! You need to manually promote the BDC when you take down the PDC.

Out of hours, I'd just take down the BDC, then the PDC, then bring up the PDC, then the BDC.

seamus

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Generally speaking I would make sure one DC is live at anyone time. Reboot them one at a time and make sure you can logon through terminal services and quick look at event log before rebooting the next one.

Yep, this is what I would recommend. Assuming that you're running in Windows 2000 native mode or higher, the concept of PDC and BDC is a little defunct, though I have yet to encounter an installation that enjoys having the operations master rebooted.

If you're taking the PDC down for an extended period of time, promote another machine to PDC/Operations Master and GC. If you're just rebooting it, ensure that you're logged into a client PC, and that you have physical access to the server. This is particularly true if you're patching or upgrading - I remember upgrading a DC to Win2003, only to find that the existing network drivers didn't work. Que a lot of running in and out of server rooms, plugging in USB keys.

Rebooting a PDC during working hours will cause problems!

Once the PDC is done, reboot the BDC. If you have an Exchange 2000/2003 server, that may also benefit from a restart after the DCs are done.

workaccount

Why would I need to take down the BDC aswell then if it needs to be promoted manually. (or perhaps your talking about applying security updates - im not doing that at this moment in time)

So how do you promote it out of interest?

seamus

What OS are they running?

I wouldn't recommend going through the procedure of changing the roles of the domain controllers, unless the PDC is going to be unavailable for an extended period during working hours.

workaccount

seamus wrote:

What OS are they running?

I wouldn't recommend going through the procedure of changing the roles of the domain controllers, unless the PDC is going to be unavailable for an extended period during working hours.

2003. I wouldn't be taking it down for long and it would be off peak so I wouldn't be enabling the BDC.