Vinny's questions

I recently added a new domain controller to my domain. The past admins had the SYSVOL and NETLOGON folders on the C drive. I always thought it was best practice to have them on a separate drive so when promoting the new DC to a DC, I changed the location to the D drive.

I've run into an issue where those folders aren't replicating and users cannot log in using the new domain controller.

When I run dcdiag I get

 Warning: DsGetDcName returned information for \\NY1-DC01.domain.net, when we were trying to reach
     NY1-DC02.
     SERVER IS NOT RESPONDING or IS NOT CONSIDERED SUITABLE.

Let me know if they need to be in the same location and if so, the best way to proceed.

FYI, original DC is 2012 R2, new DC is 2016. Function level is 2012 R2

Thanks!

Recently I set up a Dell R720 to be a file server. 2 of the 16 drives were used for the OS (RAID 1) while the other 14 were used for RAID 10, or so I thought. I opened up OpenManage today and saw that there are 6 spans of drives but in one of those spans, there is only 1 drive. Looking deeper, I see that there is one drive not part of the RAID that is just in a "ready" state.

I swear that I didn't set it up like this but here we are. Is it possible to add this one drive to the RAID or am I going to need to blow away the whole thing and start over.

Side question, is it even possible to have a RAID 10 with an odd number of drives?

We are starting to move our infrastructure from VMware to AWS. VMware allows you to open a console connection to the VM to see what on the screen without RDPing to it. It's basically like logging directly into the machine as if it were real and you were in front of it.

This is particularly useful for some of our internal applications that require a persistent session and do things like screen scraping and OCR. They also automatically generate keystrokes and mouse movements.

I was wondering if a console session like the one in VMware is possible in AWS. The only thing I've found remotely close to what might work is installing VNC on it which opens up other security risks so that really isn't an option.

Anyone run into this and have any thoughts?

FYI: Our machines are currently Windows 7 and server 2012

I am moving my local AD domain to AWS and I am not sure the best way to do it.

Scenario: I have 2 on-prem domains (.local and .net). I am retiring one of them and moving to the other. Both are considered production as they are both actively used. Before I start moving everything from one to the other, I want to have AD extended into AWS. In addition, we eventually want to be out of the data center.

Option 1: Spin up 2 EC2 instances and configure them as DCs. This seems like the simplest option however the most expensive (something like $0.99/hr for 2 m4.xlarge machines).

Option 2: Use AWS Directory Service (looks pretty new). The problem with this is they don't allow you to extend your current domain to it. They only allow you to create a brand new domain. The advantages are that its cheaper ($0.40/hr I believe) and that they configure everything for you. I suppose if I went this way I'd need to set up a trust with my current domains.

Does anyone have experience with the AWS directory service? I just can't seem to find anything on the Internet about comparing these 2 options.

If anyone has a better option than the 2 listed above I'd love to hear about it too.

Reference links:

Extending on-prem domain to AWS: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/quickstart/latest/active-directory-ds/scenario-2.html

AWS Directory Service: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/directoryservice/latest/admin-guide/directory_microsoft_ad.html

Thanks for the help!