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Active Directory IFM integrity check

sakthiganesh s 20 Reputation points
2025-11-05T07:00:04.3133333+00:00

Hi Team,

Require your suggestion regarding Active directory IFM.

We are doing an upgrade project for the 2016 AD servers (core server) to 2022, We have multiple sites and DC at the sites are physical server. We cannot deploy new physical server in the site for this task .

So we have planned to demote the AD role from the existing 2016 server and after the demotion perform the Inplace upgrade, post successful upgrade repromote the server as domain controller. This is the approach we follow.

to avoid the replication delay we are generating an IFM from existing 2022 domain controller and copying it to the 2016 server (Source and destination is diffrent sites), Post inplace upgrade, we are using the copied IFM for DC repromotion but we are noticing after the promotion domain partition is showing Disk error and showreps shows last successful replication was never.

What would be the cause for this?

Is there any MS tool to verify whether IFM is corrupted during file copy or any way to find IFM copy is healthy?

Error we are noticing in dcdiag and repadmin /showreps

Replication was delayed for a normal reason, result 1127, While accessing the hard disk, a disk operation failed even after retries , Last Success @ (Never), Even after 2 days the status is still same.

Is there any way to fix this issue?

Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | Directory services | Active Directory
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  1. Chen Tran 4,630 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2025-11-06T06:52:06.4366667+00:00

    Hello Ganesh

    Thank you for posting question on Microsoft Windows Forum.

    Based on the issue description, it probably indicates a problem with the Active Directory database file (NTDS.dit) within your IFM media. Either because of Corrupt Source Database which the IFM was created from the source 2022 DC while its database was in a "Dirty Shutdown" state. The IFM process essentially copied a non-functional database or because of Corrupt File Copy of which the NTDS.dit file (which could be very large) was corrupted during the copy between sites.

    The suggested tool to verify the health of IFM is esentutl.exe (obviously, it must perform this check before attempting the promotion) which checks the integrity of the database file and, most importantly, tell you if it is in a "Clean Shutdown" or "Dirty Shutdown" state. You cannot promote from an IFM in a "Dirty Shutdown" state.

    For more information about the tool esentutl.exe.

    For more information about troubleshooting the Error 1127.

    Hope the above information is helpful!

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