Domain Controller / Exchange Issue

Thraxen

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2001
4,683
1
81
We have a couple of DCs in our site along with an Exchange Server. We would like to be able to take down the first-in-site DC when some sort of maintenance is needed and have the other DC simply take over. But each time we take down the PDC Exchange throws a fit and we get dozens of errors in the event viewer.

Here are some of the errors:
-----------------------------------------
EventID:8250
The Win32 API call 'DsGetDCNameW' returned error code [0x54b] The specified
domain either does not exist or could not be contacted. The service could
not be initialized. Make sure that the operating system was installed
properly.

EventID: 9188
Microsoft Exchange System Attendant failed to read the membership of group
'cn=Exchange Domain Servers,cn=Users,dc=domain,dc=com'. Error code
'8007203a'.

Please check whether the local computer is a member of the group. If it is
not, stop all the Microsoft Exchange services, add the local computer into
the group manually and restart all the services.

EventID: 2115
Process INETINFO.EXE (PID=852). DSAccess needs to close a connection to the
Domain Controller dc2.domain.com due to error 0x80040920.
(this error is relates to the 2nd DC)

EventID: 2102
Process MAD.EXE (PID=2476). All Domain Controller Servers in use are not
responding: (list of all our DCs)

EventID: 2104
Process EMSMTA.EXE (PID=256). All the DS Servers in domain are not
responding.
--------------------------------------------

If you go to the Directory Access tab in the Exchange System Manager you see this:

DC1 - Config (auto)
DC2 - DC (auto)
DC1 - DC (auto)
DC2 - GC (auto)
DC1 - GC (auto)

Both are in the same site and domain, so I left out both of those columns. As you can see, Exchange sees both DCs in the site. We've run dcdiag on all the DCs and they all pass every test.

This is the info about the software involved:
Exchange 2003 Version 6.5 (Build 7638.2: Service Pack 2)
Windows 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack1

Any ideas?
 

alent1234

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2002
3,915
0
0
we have a similar issue where a DC sometimes goes bonkers and exchange goes bonkers with it. once it took another cluster down with it. haven't found a solution. i think it's a bug in the windows software.
 

azev

Golden Member
Jan 27, 2001
1,003
0
76
this could be a long shot, but have you check your dns entry?
Make sure all srv records are pointing to the right dc.