We have two VMware virtualised DCs which have just undergone a scheduled Windows Update round and reboot. The secondary DC completed with no problems but the primary failed to reboot and ultimately the VM had to be rebuilt using the virtual hard disks from the original VM. Now, DHCP on the primary is not working.
The ESXi host is on 6.5.0, virtual hardware is v13 and VMware Tools is 10.1.15. DC OS is Server 2008 R2 Std. SP2.
DHCP is working on the secondary DC but this is located at another site and on a different subnet so as a workaround, we've had to enable the DHCP server on the firewall. Everything looks okay on the primary and there is nothing to indicate what has gone wrong. We've re-created the DHCP scope and rebooted the server but this has had no effect.
Has anyone experienced anything similar?
Best Answer
Are you able to go in your DNS's console and such ? I suspect your AD was screwed up with your recovery method, especially if you VMDK is older than 6 months's old, as you end up with a tombstone DC in the best scenario, as it can be an USN rollback too (See more info there)
I would create another VM to DCPromo it and link it to the remote DC server, to phase out that problematic DC.
Never do a file level recovery for a DC that way, use systemstate backup please with like wbadmin.