AD offline Defrag Plans

[mrfreezy]

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,

[John Veteran]

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.

[MazX_Napalm]

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.

[mrfreezy]

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?

[MazX_Napalm]

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