Intersite replication and lag sites

[Andy]

I've a got the following setup: Windows 2003 domain, single forest, 3 sites.
Now, two of these sites are set to replicate every 15 minutes. The third site
is a lag site that replicates every 4 hours. Now, in the event rule "Script -
AD Replication Monitoring", on the Responses tab, I edit the script so
Intersite replication within 30 minutes.

So, everything works as it should. If the DC's in the two sites with 15 min
repl intervals are down, I get an alert. The problem is, as you can prbably
see, is that I get alerts for the DCs in the lag site since it's replication
time is above the threshhold.

Options? I thought of 4
1. Ignore the alerts and leave them in the Alert queue.
2. Acknowledge the alert every hour (which is the frequency at which the
rule runs).
3. Edit the "AD Replication is occurring slowly" rule (whichis the one that
generates the alert) and change the criteria to filter out any references to
the lag site.
4. Bump up the Intersite replication time to 4 hours to cover the lag site.

All of the these solutions have problems. The least harmful is probably #1.
Does anyone have any other ideas? I thought about trying to create a rule
just for the dcs in the lag site but that looks to be alot of work. Anyone?

[Anders Bengtsson]

Hi Andy,

Creating a new rule only for the DC in the lag site is not that much work,
but I think you might get alerts from your other domain controllers too,
that the lag site DC have not replicate. Try to create a new rule for this
machine only.

-----
Regards
Anders Bengtsson
Microsoft MVP - MOM
http://www.contoso.se


A> All of the these solutions have problems. The least harmful is
A> probably #1. Does anyone have any other ideas? I thought about trying
A> to create a rule just for the dcs in the lag site but that looks to
A> be alot of work. Anyone?
A>

[Andy]

So, what I did was edit the AD Replication Monitoring rule. I enabled an
override and added the two DCs in my lag site. So, that rule should cover all
the DC's except those two. I then created a second rule exactly like AD
Replication Monitoring rule and enabled an override for all the DCs except
the ones in my lag site and set the replication interval to a greater value.

Now, I don't get alerts for the DCs in the lag site, which is good. But, as
you thought, I do get alerts from the DCs in the normal sites saying they are
slow to replicate to the DCs in the lag site. I edited the "AD Replication is
occurring slowly" rule and set the criteria to exclude anything with the lag
site name (Site name: <lag site>).

I think that should do it. If I understand all this correctly, I believe
that will effectively only be able to catch problems with replication of DC
from the lag site TO the other sites since any issues with replication from
the normal sites TO the lag sites will be filtered out.

Post by Anders Bengtsson
Hi Andy,
Creating a new rule only for the DC in the lag site is not that much work,
but I think you might get alerts from your other domain controllers too,
that the lag site DC have not replicate. Try to create a new rule for this
machine only.
-----
Regards
Anders Bengtsson
Microsoft MVP - MOM
http://www.contoso.se
A> All of the these solutions have problems. The least harmful is
A> probably #1. Does anyone have any other ideas? I thought about trying
A> to create a rule just for the dcs in the lag site but that looks to
A> be alot of work. Anyone?
A>