Recently while testing an upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2007 in a virtual test environment I got an error message. You know one of those error messages that Microsoft has a really wacky cause for. In this particular case the error message was:

“The FSMO role ownership could not be verified because its directory partition has not replicated successfully with at least one replication partner.”

That error message looks detailed enough, doesn’t it. It is obviously associated with Active Directory. Here is the Microsoft answer to the problem.

“This issue may occur if the EBS servers are being installed in a virtual environment (Hyper-V or 3rd party) where the host machine’s time zone is set to a time zone other than PST.”

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969161

Ok, so the cause had some linkage to the style of test environment we were using, i.e. it was a virtual environment, not hyper V, but XenServer 5.5. This was obviously not the problem.

What was the real issue?

Part of the upgrade process requires a Active Directory Schema update, so it wants to look up the Active Directory environment. If there is a missing or offline domain controller it will not be happy. Hence what we had here. The test environment was mirrored from production, minus the second domain controller. For the purpose of our testing it hasn’t been an issue.

To find out what the issue is:

  • Run a DCDiag to try and find any domain issues.
  • Check the Active Directory Users and Computers snap in for any domain controllers computer objects that are no longer available or offline, if there are any delete them.
  • Check in Active Directory Sites and Services for any replication settings to a domain controller that is offline or no longer available, delete any as required.

This should then fix the issue. Do not delete domain controller computer objects for servers that are only temporarily unavailable.