Hi Guys, Failed DC Promo of a Windows 2008 R2 server. No worries, it was due to DNS. Fixed it. I thought, before I do this again, I will rename it and then do a dcpromo again. So I renamed the server and rebooted. Upon reboot, I dcpromo'ed the server fine. However, the old server name is now listed in sites and services, along with the new server name. This domain has multiple sites. Is it safe to delete the old server from this site, or do I need to do the meta data cleanup? Thanks.

Hi there, The more thorough approach would be to run ntdsutil and check that the old server name isn't actually listed within that site. If it is, follow the usual metadata cleanup process (as you've aleady mentioned). A crude alternative is to look in Sites and Services under the old server name and if there's not "NTDS Settings" object, you should be safe to simply remove the object. If the server object does actually contain a "NTDS Settings" object then you should revert back to the above process using ntdsutil metadata cleanup. Independant of both options, you should also check the DNS records for the service locators have been removed (within the _msdcs zone). Cheers, Lain

There's nothing actually in the NTDS Settings object. Where as the new server there is. I was going to run the metadata cleanup just to be sure. The computer is also showing under domain computers, where as the newly renamed one is under domain controllers. Looks like the dcpromo the first time error'ed out half way through the process.

Yeah, you'd expect the computer object to be there as well as the site server object. Given there's no NTDS Settings object, you should be fine to simply remove the computer object as well as the site server object. Again, just make sure DNS reflects the removal and no lingering records are left pointing your LDAP services and so on to the missing server. They shouldn't be there, but as I'm not sure how the failure manifested, it would be better to spend a minute checking. Cheers, Lain

I did it the meta data cleanup way and it removed bugger all, so I think that was as far as it got. All good, thanks for the help.