Lightning fast directory replication
Bob Fuller
11.05.2002
Rating: -4.18- (out of 5) Hall of fame tip of the month winner
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Here's a very fast way to force a full directory replication between domain controllers -- without having to use the Sites and Services MMC snap-in.
Have you made a change and want to make certain that all your DCs take the update? Even on some of the "instant" changes, I sometimes find that one or more DCs didn't get it in time. How did I manage? Well, until I discovered the little file I am going to share with you below, I was using the Sites and Services snap-in -- and having to click 20 or 30 items for every instance, thereby wasting an enormous amount of my valuable time.
From the Windows 2000 support tools, this little command line tool, stuck into a batch file, works wonderfully! The tool is 'REPADMIN.EXE' and here is a very small batch file I was using successfully in a test lab:
- :start
- REM Batch file for full directory replication
- repadmin /sync dc=lab,dc=t-bird,dc=edu labdc01 9d8596a4-d3c2-4287-a9a1-598e03a63dc0 /full
- repadmin /sync dc=lab,dc=t-bird,dc=edu labdc03 a05c16c7-8dab-4ace-bf02-c26fa95b2679 /full
- :end
As you can see, you only need a minimal understanding of LDAP, and a little registry hunting skill, to find the ID of the second DC. Each of these lines forces a full synchronization to another server -- these two lines completely update a 3 DC tree. I saved them as 'REPL.BAT' and whenever I make a change to the directory, I immediately run this batch file. One double click, and voila! -- Full rep in just a couple of seconds!
If you manually initiate replications, and most admins I've met do, you'll find this batch file incredibly useful. It takes a little effort to create, but once you're done, I'm positive that you'll love it.
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