My PDC: It Wasn't There
This is not about the Professional Developers Conference, but whenever I can say anything close to PDC: I'LL BE THERE!, I'm damned-well going to say it.
My home office network consists of 4 computers, 3 running W2K Server, 1 running W2K3. My oldest box, a mom-n-pop 550Mhz with 512MB is my PDC, or Primary Domain Controller server. I'm not a network guy and don't see the term PDC used often, but I assume it still refers to the computer with Active Directory, DNS, WINs, etc. Darn important job, whatever its name. This W2K server took over the job 6 months ago when my prior PDC, another mom-n-pop Pentium Pro 200Mhz with 64MBs of RAM W2K started making a continuous noise which sounded a lot like a bag of potato chips being crushed.
So Friday night I sat down and wanted to nerd out a bit and I see that the application log is full on the box that runs Exchange. Okay, I can clean that up, the error says something about Active Directory. Then I try to hit a site on the same box from another box and the connection times out. Not lookin' good. Active Directory? DNS? No, don't let it be the domain controller.
So I turn on the PDC's monitor and a HUE color band rectangle is floating across the screen with “Monitor is working fine! Check the computer!” I swear to god, that's what it said.
So that explained why my office seemed so quiet! Yeah, no PDC. I hit the reboot button a few times, unplugged it, plugged it back in and still nothing. So I unplugged it again, let it rest for 30 seconds, tilting it way forward to ensure the power cord was fully inserted, and it fired back up. That was 4 days ago. It must have been running for 4 months since the last time I rebooted it, so who knows. I should probably start thinking about a AD and DNS redundancy and transitional strategy.