When discussing GPO version numbers, we mentioned Active Directory replication a couple of times. While checking up on the status and health of the replication process itself is generally a topic outside the scope of Group Policy, AD and GP are so intertwined that it's good to know how to check the status of the replication process.

There is some functionality built right into the GPMC for checking on the overall health of the AD replication process. After opening up GPMC, click on the name of your domain, and then look at the Status tab:

There is not a lot of information listed here by default. You can see the name of my DC1 domain controller listed, indicating that I am currently communicating with DC1 in order to pull information. The real results come when you click on that Detect Now button. This will query your Domain Controllers and the replication status between them:

My report is pretty boring. Since this is a simple test lab, there is only one Domain Controller and so we have no replication errors because there is no replication happening. This report will become much more interesting in your own environments, where (hopefully) you are running more than one directory server. This Status tab gives you peace of mind that replication between your DCs is behaving properly.