Appendix A: Metadata Cleanup for the Retired AD LDS Instances

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008

If you want to restore a retired Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) replica, you must first delete the server object that represents this AD LDS replica.

Membership in Administrators, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at Local and Domain Default Groups (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477).

To perform a metadata cleanup using dsmgmt

  1. On one of the remaining AD LDS instances in the configuration set, click Start, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

  2. At the command prompt, type dsmgmt, and then press ENTER.

  3. At the dsmgmt: prompt, type metadata cleanup, and then press ENTER.

  4. At the metadata cleanup: prompt, type select operation target, and then press ENTER.

  5. At the select operation target: prompt, type connections, and then press ENTER.

  6. At the server connections: prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER.

    connect to server <computername:portnumber>

    where <computername:portnumber> represents the AD LDS instance to which you are connecting.

  7. At the server connections: prompt, type q, and then press ENTER.

  8. At the select operation target: prompt, type list sites, and then press ENTER. Identify the number that corresponds to the site in which the server object that you want to delete resides.

  9. At the select operation target: prompt, type select site <n>, and then press ENTER, where <n> represents the number that was identified in the previous step.

  10. At the select operation target: prompt, type list naming contexts, and then press ENTER. Identify the number that corresponds to a naming context that was previously held by the server whose server object you want to delete.

  11. Type select naming context <n>, and then press ENTER, where <n> represents the number that was identified in the previous step.

  12. Type list servers in site, and then press ENTER. Identify the number that is associated with the server whose server object you want to delete.

  13. Type select server <n>, and then press ENTER, where <n> represents the number that was identified in the previous step.

  14. At the select operation target: prompt, type q, and then press ENTER.

  15. At the metadata cleanup: prompt, type remove selected server, and then press ENTER. Click yes to confirm the deletion of the server object.

  16. In addition, you must delete the server object from the sites container:

    CN=Servers,CN=sitename,CN=Sites,CN=Configuration,CN={GUID}

    where sitename represents the name of the site in which the server object exists, and GUID represents the globally unique identifier (GUID) of the AD LDS instance.

    To view the complete syntax for this command, at a command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    dsmgmt /?