Replmon.exe not included in Windows Server 2008/2008 R2
A lot of administrators are used to check their Active Directory replication status using replmon.exe which is a part of the Windows Server 2003 Support tools.
Today I stumbled across the need to use replmon.exe on a domain controller running Windows Server 2008, and was unable to find it.
It turns out that that this utility is not included in Windows Server 2008/2008 R2.
According to a comment from a team member from the Microsoft Directory Services Team, this is the explanation:
“Unfortunately, replmon did not survive the transition to Win2008. It was actually developed by MS support, not the product group (along with many other support tools/resource kit tools), and without an actual owner to service the tool years later, it was a casualty. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on 2008 though…”
I wouldn`t recommend using unsupported tools on Windows Server 2008/2008 R2, so the advice would be to either use repadmin.exe on 2008/2008 R2, or to use replmon.exe from a Windows Server 2003 server.
You can find the command reference for repadmin.exe in Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 here.
A few examples:
repadmin.exe /showrepl shows the replication-status for the domain controller the tool are being run from.
repadmin.exe /showrepl servername shows the replication-status for the domain controller with the provided servername,
repadmin.exe /queue shows the replication-queue for the domain controller the tool are being run from.
repadmin.exe /queue servername shows the replication-queue for the domain controller with the provided servername,
repadmin.exe /replsummary shows a brief summary of the replication status.
I also checked if there are any PowerShell cmdlets for checking replication status in Windows Server 2008 R2, but it`s not. Hopefully this will be implemented some time in the future.
PS: I did test installing the Windows Server 2003 Support tools on a Windows Server 2008 domain controller in a lab environment, and it does work.
About
Jan Egil Ring works as a Senior Consultant on the Infrastructure Team at Crayon, Norway.
He mainly works with Microsoft server-products, and has a strong passion for Windows PowerShell. In addition to being a consultant, he is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
He has obtained several certifications such as MCITP: Enterprise Administrator and MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator. For more details see his MCP Virtual Business Card.
In January 2011, he was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions in the Windows PowerShell technical community.
His engagements as a speaker includes TechDays in Norway, as well as a Microsoft Office 365 bootcamp for Microsoft partners in Norway.
He is a co-founder of the Norwegian Microsoft Technology User Group (MTUG), which is an assosication of local MTUG user groups in Norway.
His intentions with this blog is to share experiences based on various projects and troubleshooting, as well as sharing different resource links to technologies he works with.
Google Reader – My Shared Items- Kill cmd.exe Bartek Bielawski
- SCVMM 2012 Quick Tip: Finding which storage arrays a Hyper-V host can see hector.linares
- On Becoming a Senior Technical Individual Contributor jsnover
- Fix for "You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console" in Exchange 2010 Jeff
- The Windows 8 Task Manager Steven Sinofsky
