I have a domain controller that I’m working on decommisioning. It was the first domain controller in the domain. It was also at one time a file and application server, but that was before my time.
Anyway, I’ve already transfered all 4 roles to the new server, but for some reason, if I remove it from the domain, all hell breaks loose and no one can login without it taking forever or just not working at all. Even be bootup on some stations doesn’t complete. What am I missing?
Not sure if it matters but: I did notice that for some reason in computer management, there’s ALOT of sessions in the Shared folders but no actual files open. The share was previously the one hosting files for the applications, but those are all, or should be coming from the new server. The pointer to the new file share is in an INI file on each computer and I’ve verified each and every one (all 400 odd computers). The connections for SYSVOL, NETLOGON, etc are the same as the other servers load, but I don’t want to demote it until I’m sure things will go smoothly.
I experieced this yesterday when I simply unplugged the network cable to the old server to see how many systems would be affected and low and behold, it nearly ran the network to a stop.
From the best I can tell, the network cards, processors, switches, memory and hard drive activities are not being hampered….but I’m not a networking person either. So the only other thing I can think of is this server is cranky. Looking at the switch logs, this one is sending quite alot of pause frames (several thousand a minute) which seems a bit odd also since the other interfaces are only sending a hundred or so every hour or so.
This all started after migrateing our entire system from one set of standup servers to Dell PE2950 rack servers.