Hello,

I'm planning to do offline defrag of the AD info on my 3 domain controllers.

The plan I have laid is following from this website link. I've never done this before.

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/Win...leNTDS.DIT.html

If I follow the instructions on the link , I should be able to perfrom the offline defrag?


Do you recommend me powering off all 3 servers and perform the defrag all at the same time, then powering each server back up one at at time?

Or does it matter if I have a dc running still, while I take another dc offline to defrag?

Thanks,

You should be able to do them one at a time. After the defrag, just make sure you allow the new changes to the domain to be fully replicated to the newly defragmented DC.

I've only ever done this, on more than 1 server, in a test environment. It worked.

Be very careful and make sure the backup worked before continuing.

AD replicates every 15 minutes? by default. You should complete one in 15 minutes.

ok so just to get things straight I have dc1 , dc 2, dc3.

While dc 2 and dc 3 are up and running, I take dc 1 offline, defrag it ..boot it back online..wait 15mins.

take dc2 offline, while dc 1 and dc 3 is running. defrag it.

boot up dc2, wait 15mins,

take dc3 offline, while dc 1 and dc 2 is running, defrag it.

boot up dc 3 and wait 15mins.

finished then?

No need to wait the 15 minutes. Thats just when the replication takes place.