[Samba] Windows PDC vs BDC placement; who takes care of the bulk of domain logons?

[Nathan Vidican]

Hey all, might be a tad bit off topic to samba, but not entirely unlrelated.

Anyhow, as I understand it, the task of a BDC is to process most if not all
of the domain logons before a PDC does so is it not? It has been my
understanding that the BDC generally accepts and processes domain logons
before the PDC does on a network to keep the load down on the PDC until such
time as the BDC cannot process/handle them quickly enough (at which time the
PDC accepts/processes logons itself) - thereby making it functional and
scalable to add many BDCs to a network.

Am I wrong? Does the PDC accept first and roll over to the BDC when it's
busy... Or?


The reason I ask, is because we are currently running two samba servers, one
acting as the PDC, and the other as the BDC. The PDC however also performs
other functions, and only services as samba server for a few minimal shares
and for most of the printers on the network. Whereas the BDC contains the
bulk of our shares, all user profiles and homedirs (mapped from both unix
and windows). Ironically, the primary ldap runs on the BDC, which replicates
to the PDC, (the PDC uses itself for access to the tree, but updates are
sent to BDC then cascade back down to the PDC's running ldap server).

Unfortunately, the PDC seems to be taking care of all domain logons at this
time, I can't seem to get a machine to logon via the BDC. Drive mappings
(from logon scripts) map shares to both the PDC and the BDC, but the login
script itself will only get run from the PDC. Should I change the BDC to be
the actual BDC and vice-versa, or could there be something in WINS perhaps
to tell clients to use the BDC first then the PDC? Or am I completely wrong
in the assumption that it's supposed to be BDC, then PDC?



--
Nathan Vidican
nvidican at wmptl.com
Windsor Match Plate & Tool Ltd.
http://www.wmptl.com/