Windows Tip Sheet
Automate Conversion of Your DCs Into GCs
Speed up DC deployment with a simple GC script.
I was recently helping a client deploy domain controllers (DCs)
in about three dozen new offices (frequent flier miles, here I come).
Because each office would eventually house about six hundred employees
and because the company uses Exchange Server 2003, it seemed sensible
to add two or three domain controllers to each office and ensure
at least one of them was a Global Catalog (GC) server. To save time—we’re
talking a total of 75 new DCs—we worked up an automated installations
script to install the domain controllers.
After deploying DCs in two offices, we realized that none of the
DCs we were installing had been made into GC servers. Of course,
we realized this because users were going across the WAN for address
book lookups and were raising heck about the poor performance of
their e-mail clients! We quickly designated a GC in each location
but wanted to fix the problem in our deployment technique.
We were using a Dcpromo answer file to handle the domain controller
promotion process, and a little research turned up the answer: We
simply needed to add the line ConfirmGC = Yes
to the answer file for the DCs that would be GC servers. Seemed
like a nice simple tip for speeding up DC deployment, so I thought
I’d share it!
| Cool
Gadget |
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On an unrelated topic, I’ve
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|
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More Resources:
- Read more about automating DCpromo here.
- Learn to combine unattended Setup and unattended DCpromo here.
- The official word on the subject of unattended DC promotion
can be found here.
About the Author
Don Jones is a multiple-year recipient of Microsoft’s MVP Award, and is Curriculum Director for IT Pro Content for video training company Pluralsight. Don is also a co-founder and President of PowerShell.org, a community dedicated to Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell technology. Don has more than two decades of experience in the IT industry, and specializes in the Microsoft business technology platform. He’s the author of more than 50 technology books, an accomplished IT journalist, and a sought-after speaker and instructor at conferences worldwide. Reach Don on Twitter at @concentratedDon, or on Facebook at Facebook.com/ConcentratedDon.