Sites and services automatic connection

Question

I have four sites, all that already have existing domain controllers. I'm migrating my DC's to new hardware, so I stood up another DC at each site. When I promoted the new DC's at each location, the new DC's created a connection to the old/existing DC at each site and that's it (nothing to the existing sites). Is this standard behavior or no?

Answer 1

Hi,
From the article following: Yes, It is a standard behavior.

For domain controllers in the same site, the KCC creates connection objects automatically without administrative intervention.
Within a site, the connections between writable domain controllers are always arranged in a bidirectional ring, with additional shortcut connections to reduce latency in large sites.

Regarding connection between inter-sites. The replication is processed through the ISTG (ISTG is the domain controller responsible to create automatically the connection objects between its AD site and the others sites in the forest.) By default ISTG is the first DC added in the AD site.
So there will not connection generated when you add a additional DC at each sites. But When you removed the old DCs, the KCC will select a new ISTG automatically. And the new ISTG will connect to ISTG in other sites.

If you want the Kcc to do it automatically, We should not configure preferred bridgehead server, if there are preferred bridgehead server configured, we should remove it.

Determine whether the server is a preferred bridgehead server
Configure the server to not be a preferred bridgehead server

Best Regards,