Hardware dies, it always has and it always will eventually.  And if you ever had a Windows 2000/2003 domain controller die on you, you’ve no doubt gone through the painless but time consuming process of removing a failed DC.  I wrote an article on it a few years ago and while you might be planning to migrate your DCs to 2008, or already have, one thing you’ll like is the automated metadata clean up when removing a failed Windows Server 2008 based DC from your AD domain!

Now a DC can be removed in three simple steps!  First right-click the computer account in Active Directory Users and Computers and select delete.  You will be prompted with a warning asking you to confirm.

Ensure you have selected the proper DC and then click Yes.  You will then be presented with another box telling you to perform a DCPromo to demote the server.  Since the server is dead and we can’t do such a thing, check the box about the DC being offline permanently and then click Delete.

In the event that the DC is also a Global Catalog server you will be prompted with another warning.  This doesn’t mean much other that to remind you to ensure you have another GC in your AD organization.

Once you click Yes the DC will be deleted from AD including all it’s metadata!