Removing a non-replicating DC

[Nikumba]

We have a situation where we need to remove one of our DC's due to it not replicating the SYSVOL and NETLOGON folders, we have ran tests on the rest of the DC's and that one, and the tests from the sick DC pass, from the good DC's it fails.

We have tested replication by placing a text file in each NETLOGON folder and the good DC's replicate the file instantly, the sick DC does not get the new files nor replicates out its one.

We have already built a new DC and promoted it and it is now working without issue.

Now normally you would run dcpromo to remove a DC from a domain, however we are reluctant to do this as we are not getting replication so even if the dcpromo worked the odds are high that the DC information would remove on the good DC's

This led us to basically turning off the sick DC, then following a process to remove an orphaned DC, the sick DC is a global catalogue along with all of our other DC's.

So looking for suggestions on which is the best method, what have people done in this circumstance etc

Cheers

Kimbie

 

[HarryPainful]

NTDSUTIL to remove it, easy enough job to do.

Check if its currently holding any FSMO roles and move them.

 

[Nikumba]

It doesn't have any FSMO roles, other than it being a GC but so are all of our DC's.

But I think we are going to just tombstone it now, power it off, and remove it later

kimbie

 

[SpeckleD]

Are you getting journal wrap errors on the duff server? have you tried resetting the BurFlags to force the duff server to do a full replication?

 

[Mikoyan]

What OS is all the DC's on?

 

[PAz]

Judging from your post I assume you are not too bothered about finding out the reason for the failed replication now? In which case I'd removed with ntdsutil like Harry said, and follow metadata cleanup below after removing DC to ensure environment is clean;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc816907(v=WS.10).aspx