ActiveDirectory Provider fail over Best Practices

Question

ActiveDirectory Server 2003

I am using the ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider and ADroleProvider. They work great. Until my active directory server restarts in the middle of the day to get updates. (I'm not in charge of the server and can't change this). When this happens, for the five minutes the server is rebooting, my users can't use my website because I've tied my menu to the Role Provider. So, here are my questions:

1. Is it possible to tell my RoleProvider to use the "next" available ADS? If so, how so that while the initial one reboots, I don't frustrate my users with ADS connection messages?
2. Should I be using some kind of connection pool that automatically reconnects to the available server? If so, how?
3. Let's imagine that all my active directory servers go down. Is there a way to keep my web application running? Obviously there are bigger problems if all servers are down, but what I'm after is a possible "disconnected" active directory authentication that will still move forward if the server somehow goes kaput. Is this wise AND possible?

Answer 1

You probably have the server connection string set to "server01.domain.local". If you change it to just "domain.local" you're no longer depending on "server01" being online. Instead you will use the Round Robin feature of Active Directory DNS to get a list of all domain controllers and use one that's online. (I don't think your admins reboot all of the domain controllers at the same time...)

Also try running nslookup domain.local a couple of times in succession in a command prompt to see the order changing.