Active Directory Cross-Site Replication Speed - Should I select Preferred Bridgehead Servers?

Question

I'm trying to get the entered information on a survey of SurveyMonkey through the API. But i'm getting the following return message: "Could not validate access to survey at this time, please try again later.", with status 5 (System Error).

I'm working with a APP in Draft status. All the scopes in my app are put on optional. And other api calls (like get_survey_list) do give me data.

I'm working with php, but the API console (https://developer.surveymonkey.com/docs/api_console/) also gives me these results.

Is there an extra permission layer i'm missing? Do ppl need to approve something through oauth?

Solution 1

It sounds like things are working as I would expect. Intersite (across sites) replication between Domain Controllers occurs at a different interval than Intrasite (same site) replication. Intersite replication by default occurs every 180 minutes. The KCC (which is responsible for building the replication topology) will build the optimal replication topology between and within sites. Manually designating one of the DC's at the local site as the preferred bridgehead server isn't going to change the replication schedule or interval, it's only going to change which DC is responsible for replication between the sites. My suggestion would be to do one of the following:

1. If you have high speed links between the sites you can adjust the replication interval to a more suitable period. 15 minutes might be a good start.

2. Force replication via Active Directory Sites and Services whenever you make a change that you'd like to replicate immediately.

3. When you create a user that exists in the remote site, create the user in Active Directory Users and Computers from the remote DC.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc728010(v=ws.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc759160(v=ws.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc737986(v=ws.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779337(v=ws.10).aspx

Solution 2

You should NOT set the Preferred Bridgehead Servers. It will not help to speed up your intersite-replication and will also make the infrastructure much less safe, as it removes some failover capabilities.

Comments

[neildeadman]

Just want to add that my reasons are to improve the speed as users log on from each site depending on where they are and so can sometimes have issue cause changes haven't been replicated quickly :)

[jivanrij]

For anybody who is interested. I've started a GIT project for a PHP Survey Monkey API v3 on Github. github.com/lyfter/SurveyMonkey_API_v3

[ravi yarlagadda]

I'll add one additional option to this great list, for if the users are super-impatient: have inter-site replication partners sent change notifications to their peers as they do in intra-site replication, by setting the options attribute of the IP site link object to turn on the 0x1 bit. See here, under "Change Notification Between Sites".

[Ryan Bolger]

I was going to post this as an answer myself, but I don't want to steal your thunder, Shane. You should definitely post it as a full answer though. Or perhaps joe can update his.

[jivanrij]

Thanks, v3 works allright :) unfortunately there is no PHP lib for it. So i'll post some code i used for other developers to use.