A few basic active directory questions

[EvolutionX]

I am new to Active directory, we've just migrated our novell server to
Windows 2000 server from one Location and installed this as a DC

Now we want to move a other Novell server to Windows 2000 server with
active directory.

Basically we want one domain with different OU's to seperate the locations.
How do I do this?

-Do I need to create a additional OU in our primary Windows server?
-Do I need to make the Windows 2000 server at the other location a DC (to
replicate with our primary server?)
-Do the users at the other location use the primary server or the server
located at their side to login?


Tnx.

 

[Deji Akomolafe]

Since you are new to AD (and especially migration), I think you better start
with a cookbook
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/deploy/cookbook/cookintr.asp

There is a very short introduction to OUs here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/sag_ADdeploy_9.htm

Having a DC at the branch (other) office is a good idea, if cost is not a
factor. But I can not answer the rest of your question in a vacuum.

HTH
Deji

 

[David Adner]

If you're NDS knowledgeable, you need to understand a few key
differences between it and AD. One of them is you can't partition the
Domain database like you can in NDS. So, while you might create OU's in
NDS and then partition them off to optimize replication, you can't do
this with AD (besides create multiple Domains, which is not a proper
solution in most cases). AD is a flat database, with every DC in a
Domain containing an identical copy of the database. OU's are created
purely for administrative reasons.

As to your questions, you should always have at least 2 DC's in a Domain
for basic fault tolerance. If you lose one, you don't want you be down
completely. And as for where users authenticate, that's determined
primarily by how you have configured your AD Sites. Go to
www.microsoft.com/technet and start reading and test this out in an
isolated environment if you want to do this right the first time.

 

[EvolutionX]

We have a Windows 2000 server at the other location.

I want to know if it's possible to use our primary DC for the other
location (128k line)

If so, our situation would be: 1 DC and 1 DNS server for 2 locations.

Would roaming profiles be problem (If I put the location of the home dir
etc. at the file server located at their location)?

 

[Deji Akomolafe]

with 128K line, your situation would be greatly improved by deploying
another DC/GC/DNS in the remote office if you can afford the hardware.

HTH

Deji