AD Replication Status Tool is Live

08/23/2012

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Hey all, Ned here with some new troubleshooting tool love, courtesy of the ADREPLSTATUS team at Microsoft. I’ll let them do the talking:

The Active Directory Replication Status Tool (ADREPLSTATUS) is now LIVE and available for download at the Microsoft Download Center.

ADREPLSTATUS helps administrators identify, prioritize and resolve Active Directory replication errors on a single DC or all DCs in an Active Directory Domain or Forest. Cool features include:

Auto-discovery of the DCs and domains in the Active Directory forest to which the ADREPLSTATUS computer is joined

“Errors only” mode allows administrators to focus only on DCs reporting replication failures

Upon detection of replication errors, ADREPLSTATUS uses its tight integration with resolution content on Microsoft TechNet to display the resolution steps for the top AD Replication errors

Rich sorting and grouping of result output by clicking on any single column header (sort) or by dragging one or more column headers to the filter bar. Use one or both options to arrange output by last replication error, last replication success date, source DC naming context and last replication success date, etc.)

The ability to export replication status data so that it can be imported and viewed by source domain admins, destination domain admins or support professionals using either Microsoft Excel or ADREPLSTATUS

The ability to choose which columns you want displayed and their display order. Both settings are saved as a preference on the ADREPLSTATUS computer

Broad OS version support (Windows XP -> Windows Server 2012 Preview)

ADREPLSTATUs UI consists of a toolbar and Office-style ribbon to expose different features. The Replication Status Viewer tab displays the replication status for all DCs in the forest. The screenshot below shows ADREPLSTATUS highlighting a DC that has not replicated in Tombstone Lifetime number of days (identified here by the black color-coding)



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Using the Errors Only button, you can filter out healthy DCs to focus on destination DCs reporting replication errors.



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The Replication Error Guide has a Detected Errors Summary view that records each unique replication error occurring on the set of DCs targeted by the administrator.



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Close up of the Detected Errors Summary view.



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Selecting any of the replication error codes loads the recommended troubleshooting content for that replication error. The TechNet Article for AD Replication Error 1256 is shown below.



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The goals for this tool are to help administrators identify and resolve Active Directory replication errors before they cause user and application failures, outages or lingering objects caused short and long-term replication failures, and to provide administrators greater insight into the operation of Active Directory replication within their environments.

The current version of ADREPLSTATUS as of this posting is 2.2.20717.1 (as reported by ADREPLSTATUS startup splash screen).

Known Issues

Status

ADREPLSTATUSwill not work when the following security setting is enabled on the operating system:

• System cryptography: Use FIPS 140 compliant cryptographic algorithms, including encryption, hashing and signing algorithms

Known issue and by design.

Symptoms ADREPLSTATUSfails to launch on highly secure computers. Extra checkmark appears at bottom of column chooser when right clicking on a column header

Support

ADREPLSTATUS is a read-only tool and makes no changes to the configuration of, or objects in an Active Directory forest

The ADRPLSTATUS tool is supported by the ADREPLSTATUS team at Microsoft. Administrators and support professionals who experience errors installing or executing ADREPLSTATUS may submit a “problem report” on the following web page:

If the issue is known, the ADREPLSTATUS team will reply to this page with the status of the issue. The status field will be listed as “known issue”, “by design”, “investigating”, “In progress” or “resolved” with supporting text

If a problem requires additional investigation, the ADREPLSTATUS team will contact you at the email address provided in your problem report submission

ETA for problem resolution will depend on team workload, problem complexity and root cause. Code defects within the ADREPLSTATUS tool can typically be resolved more quickly. Tool failures due to external root causes will take longer unless a work-around can be found

The ADREPLSTATUS team cannot and will not resolve AD replication errors identified by the ADREPLSTATUS tool. Contact your support provider, including Microsoft support for assistance as required. You may also submit and research replication errors on:

Until next time,

Ned “repple depple” Pyle