AD gurus. Need your advise. Live situation.

[Alex S]

Not from the exam. This is life situation. I need replies on 3 questions below. Your replies are appreciated.
===================================================================

Fireworks Inc has designed and implemented one AD forest with 2 regional domains. 30000 employees.
Forest: fireworks.com Domain: corp.fireworks.com
Regional Domains: west.corp.fireworks.com east.corp.fireworks.com

Fireworks Inc has 2 main data centers located in New York (East), Las Vegas (West)
Two data centers connected with highly available ATM links and they host fully redundant domain controllers, exchange 2003 servers, WINS, DNS corresponding

Fireworks Inc has aquired another company on the north called Firefighters and is planning to integrate Firefighters into the corporate. Two T1 links were installed to provide redundant connectivity. One T1 link to New York, one to Las Vegas. Firefigthers has 3 NT 4.0 domains, WINS, DNS, file and application servers. WINS and DNS are replicating with Fireworks Inc WINS and DNS. All file services at both data centers are available for employees at Firefighters, and vice versa. NT 4.0 Domains have trusts enabled with Fireworks NT4.0 domain which will be removed as soon as Firefighters are integrated into West division and all users and computers are migrated to west.corp.fireworks.com domain. There are no plans to create new domain for Firefighters. All users and resources have to be integrated into west.corp.fireworks.com domain

Description of Firefighters Inc:
- Currently 500++ employees with a high possibility to grow to 1000++ employees in the future
- 1500++ computer systems and servers
- Large customer support center ( 70++ employees ) 300++ customers, requires 24x7x365 operation. They use remote connection and VPN
connection to customers to support them
- Large R&D department ( 150++ employees ) collaborating with other R&D development sites corporate-wide. This collaboration will grow
in the very near future
- Two small field services branch offices connected via VPN
- Local IS group

There is a question whether there is a need to install any domain controllers, DNS, WINS, Exchange Server 2003 at Firefigthers Inc. Original plan from Fireworks were to create OU Firefigthers and give full control to local Firefighters group to manage new OU, but not to place any local servers. IS group at Firefighters disagree with corporate on the plans and recommend to place local DC, DNS, WINS, Exchange 2003 to ensure availability of all services.

IS Group at Firefigthers was asked to provide justifications for local servers and answer following questions:

What will be possible impact on business if:

1) Firefigthers will not host local AD domain controllers and DNS servers for west.corp.fireworks.com?

2) Firefighters will not place local WINS ?

3) Firefigthers will not place local Exchange 2003 server ?

 

[Brian Desmond [MVP]]

Alex-

My replies are inline. Go easy on the cross posting next time.


1) Firefigthers will not host local AD domain controllers and DNS servers
for west.corp.fireworks.com?

Bad idea. Given that many users you're going to have a ton of WAN traffic
and saturate the T1s. Additionally if you lose both or one T1, you'll have
users at Firefighter's who cannot logon.


2) Firefighters will not place local WINS ?

Bad idea. Lose your WINS and no more Exchange Outlook access at
Firefighter's. Additionally you're going to get a ton of WINS traffic over
the WAN, saturating T1s.

3) Firefigthers will not place local Exchange 2003 server ?

Bad bad bad idea. 500 users will easily saturate a couple of T1s with
Outlook very quickly. Users can't access their email, mailflow latency will
get very high between the sites. Additionally, lose the WAN link and your
users are SOL.

My take overall, you need ot rethink this - Firefighter's IS department has
their marbles in the right place and you don't. You ened a minimum of two
West divison DCs which are GCs at the Firefighter's site. You'll also need
an Exchange mailbox server. You can have hte DCs host DNS and WINS. Your WAN
links cannot support what you want to do.


--
--
Brian Desmond
Windows Server MVP
(e-mail address removed)12.il.us

Http://www.briandesmond.com



Not from the exam. This is life situation. I need replies on 3 questions
below. Your replies are appreciated.
===================================================================

Fireworks Inc has designed and implemented one AD forest with 2 regional
domains. 30000 employees.
Forest: fireworks.com Domain: corp.fireworks.com
Regional Domains: west.corp.fireworks.com east.corp.fireworks.com

Fireworks Inc has 2 main data centers located in New York (East), Las Vegas
(West)
Two data centers connected with highly available ATM links and they host
fully redundant domain controllers, exchange 2003 servers, WINS, DNS
corresponding

Fireworks Inc has aquired another company on the north called Firefighters
and is planning to integrate Firefighters into the corporate. Two T1 links
were installed to provide redundant connectivity. One T1 link to New York,
one to Las Vegas. Firefigthers has 3 NT 4.0 domains, WINS, DNS, file and
application servers. WINS and DNS are replicating with Fireworks Inc WINS
and DNS. All file services at both data centers are available for employees
at Firefighters, and vice versa. NT 4.0 Domains have trusts enabled with
Fireworks NT4.0 domain which will be removed as soon as Firefighters are
integrated into West division and all users and computers are migrated to
west.corp.fireworks.com domain. There are no plans to create new domain for
Firefighters. All users and resources have to be integrated into
west.corp.fireworks.com domain

Description of Firefighters Inc:
- Currently 500++ employees with a high possibility to grow to 1000++
employees in the future
- 1500++ computer systems and servers
- Large customer support center ( 70++ employees ) 300++ customers,
requires 24x7x365 operation. They use remote connection and VPN
connection to customers to support them
- Large R&D department ( 150++ employees ) collaborating with other R&D
development sites corporate-wide. This collaboration will grow
in the very near future
- Two small field services branch offices connected via VPN
- Local IS group

There is a question whether there is a need to install any domain
controllers, DNS, WINS, Exchange Server 2003 at Firefigthers Inc. Original
plan from Fireworks were to create OU Firefigthers and give full control to
local Firefighters group to manage new OU, but not to place any local
servers. IS group at Firefighters disagree with corporate on the plans and
recommend to place local DC, DNS, WINS, Exchange 2003 to ensure availability
of all services.

IS Group at Firefigthers was asked to provide justifications for local
servers and answer following questions:

What will be possible impact on business if:

1) Firefigthers will not host local AD domain controllers and DNS servers
for west.corp.fireworks.com?

2) Firefighters will not place local WINS ?

3) Firefigthers will not place local Exchange 2003 server ?

 

[Alex S]

Thanks Brian.

I am actually at the Firefigthers IS department writing justification document ...

Alex.