Is a local DC/GC server needed

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lchiu7

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#380515 16-Sep-2010 09:51

I had a further word to my friend. He is puzzled as am I.

If Outlook clients use broadcast to find the GC and broadcast traffic can't cross subnets, then broadcast will fail and the client reverts to DNS. That he was told is why there is a delay.

But as somebody else on this thread has reported, they have all their servers in different subnets with no issues. How can that be reconciled?

By the way a couple of points

1. The suggestion of a local PC as a DC/GC is his suggestion as a temporary fix since if it fails, the there is always the main DC/GC. This solution is to get over performance problems happening now

2. He is looking at a few users who are experiencing bad performance and running wireshark on their machines to see what could be going on but he's not entirely sure what to do with the results apart from send them to the provider for review.

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Snowflake

#380983 17-Sep-2010 01:43

lchiu7: I will ask my friend to see if he can knock up a picture and I will upload it.

Autodiscovery doesn't seem relevant since he is running Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003. But he tells me he is eligible to upgrade to Exchange 2007 at no software cost so is that worth doing?

exchange 2007 reduces the loading on hardware considerably, but its a fair amount of migration effort. even better still is exchange 2010. if you have DNS or other issues though, migrating exchange to another version isnt going to solve the main issues..

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kontonnz

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#380989 17-Sep-2010 03:40

from everything you have described your issue is most likely DNS related the move to a new subnet; probably has not updated all the SRV, and A records that were initially set up on commissioning of the domain and exchange box.

all active directory resources are found and only found via DNS, the mention of GC broadcast thats just the client host lookup process (name cache->broadcast local subnet->DNS resolution->NETBt Resolution, the NetBT resolution can be reversed but not recommended)

in regards to services running on the same box i.e. DNS and exchange server, while not best practice for large environments', its not a big issue (an example is MS promote and sell their very successful small business server, and this runs on a single box)

lchiu7

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#381157 17-Sep-2010 11:29

When he described the problem to me I thought of DNS problems also since both DNS servers are in the other subnet. But what I didn't undertstand was, if DNS is an issue, how does that manifest itself as sporadic errors?

What could he ask the provider in terms of dumping DNS record definitions from the DNS servers etc to look at? He has obtained a wireshark trace that records traffic during disconnection times and is asking them to look at it.

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BartManGeek

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#381169 17-Sep-2010 11:44

When you say 'subnet', is this a physically different LAN connected via a router/wan/vpn? Or is it the same physical network divided into various subnets 'routed' within a LAN switch?

lchiu7

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#381179 17-Sep-2010 12:03

BartManGeek: When you say 'subnet', is this a physically different LAN connected via a router/wan/vpn? Or is it the same physical network divided into various subnets 'routed' within a LAN switch?

The latter probably. The servers when all in the same subnet as the PC's were in the data centre. But because of IP addressing conflicts, they would not be connected into the main data centre network. The servers were then moved to the main LAN in the data centre, readdressed, DNS etc. all done, but the PC's remained in their own original subnet connected via a LAN switch.

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insane

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#381743 19-Sep-2010 00:52

I see this is hosted in a data centre, and it's within a VMware environment.

Is this their private vmware environment that they are running or a shared environment where they have just bought a few VM's from the provider?

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lchiu7

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#382151 20-Sep-2010 10:32

insane: I see this is hosted in a data centre, and it's within a VMware environment.

Is this their private vmware environment that they are running or a shared environment where they have just bought a few VM's from the provider?

My friend just got back to me. It's their private VM environment where they host servers for a number of
clients, including him.

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BarTender

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#382530 20-Sep-2010 23:18

Sent you an e-mail about this..

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