One-Liner: Find Manually Created Replication Connection Objects

Replication connections between domain controllers are created by the Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC). The KCC runs every 15 minutes and will adjust the replication topology in response to configuration changes or to a domain controller becoming unavailable.

Here's a smashing picture of an Active Directory replication topology, created and optimised by the KCC. The blue arrows are the replication connections.

 

 

Now, sometimes, admins take it on themselves to manually create replication connections between domain controllers... believe me, you're more often than not best off letting the KCC do its remarkable stuff. Not only is the result optimised, it's also resilient.

 

How to find manually created replication connections in your domain?

You'll need PS v3 + and, specifically, the Active Directory replication cmdlets introduced with Windows Server 2012. Here's a one-liner, using Get-ADReplicationConnection, to retrieve manually created replication connection objects:

Get-ADReplicationConnection -Filter {AutoGenerated -eq $False} |

Select-Object Name,AutoGenerated,ReplicateToDirectoryServer,ReplicateFromDirectoryServer |

Out-GridView

  

The filter applied to Get-ADReplicationConnection -  "AutoGenerated -eq $False" - speaks for itself. Select-Object specifies certain properties. Out-Gridview provides a graphical output. Here's a sample:

 

 

TTFN!