W2K Server - Global Catalog

[Vegito]

I know the answer but can someone tell me in a domain, what is the max global catalog you can have in 1 single domain to server 1 domain. I just feel so stoopid with this guy working for me trashing my AD

 

[Woodie]

You can have as many GCs as you have DCs. (GC only runs on DCs)

?? I don't exactly understand your question. I don't think you'd want to run the max number.

 

[Saltin]

Woodie,

I would have to agree with you that this is a confusing question.

I would have to disagree with your answer however.
The DC that holds the Infrastructure FSMO should not be a GC.
It's funny that by default the first DC in the forest is....

1) a GC
2) the Infrastructure master

but MS says you should change this....

Here is the reason why. I always get a laugh out of this (Q197132), and I quote.....

The Infrastructure Master (IM) role should be held by a domain controller that is not a Global Catalog server(GC). If the Infrastructure Master runs on a Global Catalog server it will stop updating object information because it does not contain any references to objects that it does not hold. This is because a Global Catalog server holds a partial replica of every object in the forest. As a result, cross-domain object references in that domain will not be updated and a warning to that effect will be logged on that DC's event log.

I've read that about 100 times, and I'm still not sure what they are trying to say....lol

 

[spyordie007]

I wish I had a big enough network to warrant more than one DC so I could play with such configurations.

We have a network as such at my work, however I am not the network admin there (just the help desk manager) so I have domain admin rights however our network admin would kill me if he found I was messing with the DCs.

Maybe if we got more people working for our non-profit than I could get another couple of servers, however that will probably be a while yet... :sigh: I guess it's a good thing I still have a "day job" to pay the bills.

I may be CIO of our Non-Profit, but I still get paid the same thing as our voulnteers, nothing....

-Spy

 

[Crab cake]

Your question is not at all clear, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.

The first DC in the the forest is by default the Global Catalog Server. Subsequent servers can also be appointed as GCS as well. There is no limits as to the how many servers you can have, although I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the theoretical limit is a 10 bit number which gives you 1000 or so. There's a distinct possibility that what I read was something about NDS (Novell's version of Directory Service) and not AD. Same concept, different implementation. Having multiple servers will obviously help with response time. The down side is increase replication and query traffic.