Yet another reason to avoid Microsoft server products...

[Blake, Chris]

There was a change in the domain controller config between NT4 and 2000.  In
NT you had 1 Primary Domain Controller (PDC)and >=0 Backup Domain
Controllers (BDC).  In 2000, there is no PDC/BDC arrangement - they're
peers.

While a 2000 server can exist peacefully on an older NT domain, and
vice-versa, it can't do so as a DC because the way it handles domains is
different.

Sorry for the MS Tangent

CLBlake

-----Original Message-----
From: Hewitt Tech [mailto:hewitt_tech at attbi.com]
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 7:54 PM
To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
Subject: Yet another reason to avoid Microsoft server products...


I just installed a new Intel based server for a client and ran into
something both interesting and disturbing. Enterprise software vendors have
always (or at least tried) placed a high premium on backwards compatibility.
When for example Digital Equipment Corporation released a new version of
their VMS operating system, customers would expect their existing
applications and configurations to just work. The new server I set up for
the customer needed to be running Windows 2000 server at the insistence of
their software application vendor. They already had an existing Windows NT
4.0 server which had been set up as a domain controller, DHCP server and DNS
server. When I installed the new server I was expecting to make the new
server a secondary domain controller on the LAN. Imagine my surprise when I
discovered that Microsoft does not allow a Windows NT server to be the
primary domain controller when there is also a Windows 2000 server domain
controller on the network! Microsoft requires that the existing Windows NT
server be upgraded to Windows 2000 server. When I attempted to make the new
Windows 2000 server a backup domain controller it complained that the
existing server didn't have Active Directory Services and therefore the two
servers could not be have a primary/secondary relationship.

I wrote the above a couple of days ago. Today I heard from my client that
they were experiencing SQL 2000 Server "communication link errors". The
client called the software vendor and was told to replace the servername in
their ODBC source setup with the IP address. Guess what, on a 12 node LAN,
the client workstations can't get their DNS lookups for the server resolved
quickly enough - hence the communications errors!  The more I see of
Microsoft's stuff, the worse it smells. Is it just me?

-Alex


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