Learn about how important Active Directory is and how to configure High Availability with AD server on windows 2012 and 2008, very useful for Windows server interviews.
Active directory is a critical for every network, it provides user logins, authentication requests, provides access to resources such as printers and shared folders, and even provides access to services such as exchange server, what would be the impact, if the single AD server is down in the organization, so having high availability on domain controllers help bring out of such issues.
Adding additional domain controller will bring in high availability in the network, where both the domain controllers sync between other and replicate all the information back and forth.
Things we need to consider when making active directory highly available:
- Deploy multiple domain controllers
- Deploy one domain controller per branch office site
- Distribute operations master role
- Deploy at least two DNS server
- Create additional site links to maintain AD replication
- Deploy multiple global catalog servers
- In single domain forest configure all domain controllers as global servers.
- In multiple domains forest at least one global catalog server per domain.
DC cloning prerequisites:
- PDC Emulator FSMO role hosted on a windows server 2012 DC
- PDC emulator available during cloning operations
- Windows server 2012 virtualized guests
- Virtualization hosts platform supports VM-generation ID (VMGID)
- DC you are cloning must be a member of the cloneable domain controller group.
