If a proper DR (Disaster Recovery) plan is in place, an engineer will not needs to consider about this option at all. But it’s not a perfect IT world we living on, some business can’t afford to invest on DR. anyway, as we know AD runs with FSMO roles. Depend on the design these roles may be located on different servers and sometime all runs from one DC (which is not recommended). If this role holder servers get crashed we can’t migrate these roles over. If there is no DR plan, the only way to get this work is by seizing the operation master roles.
The utility we will use for this is ntdsutil.exe. This is very handy tool for manage and maintains active directory infrastructure.
1) Log in to the server as domain administrator or enterprise administrator
2) Right click on start button and select “command prompt (admin)”
3) Type ntdsutil and press enter
4) Then type roles and press enter
5) Type connections and press enter
6) Then type connect to server <FQDN of role holder>
7) Then type quit and enter
8) In my demo I used a server which holds all the roles. To seize the roles execute following one at a time
seize schema master
seize naming master
seize RID master
seize PDC
seize infrastructure master
in each command it gives pop up to confirm if you need to do this. Confirm as yes to proceed.
9) Type quit to exit from ntdsutil.
This completes the task successfully. If you have any question about this feel free to contact me on rebeladm@live.com
