Do you put DC's on branch offices connected via fiber ?

[Marlon Brown]

We have an option to replace current T1 circuits by fiber for all 30 branch
offices.

Branch offices would be connected like this:


SmallBranch1-------fiber------>MediumBranch---------fiber---->DATACENTER
SmallBranch2-------fiber-------|
SmallBranch3-------fiber-------|


In the slowest link, the fiber link should delivered 100MB/s. Fiber should
be significantly more reliable than T1's. Of course we still have chances to
see a fiber cable getting disrupted or something like that.

Would you put DC/DNS/DHCP servers on the remote offices, or generally for
fiber you centralize the whole thing on the main data center ?

 

[Paul Bergson]

With this type of speed you can look at it as a single site and balance out
things like the whole system was all in one location.

How many users, workstations, member servers exist in a branch office? How
important is a site? Can it be down from the rest of the system during a
telco failure? Are there any alternate routes or is it a hub and spoke?

There is more to this question than just the speed. But speed definitely
makes things much easier and simpler.

 

[Marlon Brown]

Hello Paul,

It is hub and spoke topology.

1 major site has 1,000 users.
10 major sites have between 150-300 users
9 minor sites have between 50-90 users.

The problem is that our IT staff is very limited. My proposal is that we
centralize the whole thing, take statistics of system downtime and
re-address issues and place servers in the local branch offices if it turns
out telco downtime is more often then what we would like to.

I wouldn't want to see any system downtime of course, but if it happens once
or twice a year for few hours, that would be acceptable in my environment.
We are in the education business and people could survive in case of short
downtimes.

 

[Paul Bergson]

If I remember the design characteristics correctly 300 users is the cutover
point. So if everything is about 300 or less than unless you have other
bandwidth issues you can centralize your design. You could throw some dc's
out there for high use and install dns and integrate it with AD, but your
plan will probably work ok. I would definitely have multiple DC's with
multiple DNS servers (Integrated is best) on separate subnets if possible.



--

Paul Bergson MCT, MCSE, MCSA, CNE, CNA, CCA

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.