Site with NO DC

[Sandra]

We are having a problem with installs from a DFS link. We
have two plant sites that are well connected and are one
site, however, when the desktop team does a push install
to a desktop using a dfs link, the install seems to come
from the other plant site slowing things down drastically
for the wan link as well as the user. Due to budget
constraints, I just don't have anymore hardware to add
another domain controller at that plant but wondered if I
could safely create the plant into its own site, relink
the dfs server link and hope that logon and other AD
referrals aren't too slowed down.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Sandra

 

[ptwilliams]

You can create a site, but without a DC (and GC) at that site, you wont get
most of the benefits of having a separate site. Sites should have at least
one DC/GC - this then localises traffic.

I assume that you have a server on both subnets? If this is the case, you
could make that server a DNS server, and enable subnet prioritisation (can't
remember if it's on by default or not). This way the DNS server would sort
the result of a domain lookup (for the DFS share) and return the IP address
of the server in the local subnet.

--

Paul Williams
_________________________________________
http://www.msresource.net - Under construction, but coming soon...


Join us in our new forums!
http://forums.msresource.net
_________________________________________

 

[Sandra]

They have several subnets at the plant, servers on one
range, users on two others, and so on. Subnet
Prioritization wouldn't work in this case. There is an
article 200498 where you can configure a DC for membership
in multiple sites but it requires a registry change. I
don't have a full blown test environment and so am leary
of making a registry change on a production DC. I may have
to do it regardless.

Thanks for the quick response.

Sandra

 

[Herb Martin]

I pretty much agree with yours and PT's discussion up to
here:
1) you can have "sites" without subnets
2) there is seldom a reason
3) occasionally it helps to direct the authentication
but even that can be done with proper SiteLink costs

....however...

They have several subnets at the plant, servers on one
range, users on two others, and so on.

At this point, I wonder why you don't just include those
subnets in the same site with the DC.

Are you saying that you have the DFS server in one of those
other subnet/sites and you wish that to be preferred over the
other subnets at that same "location"?

If so that makes sense, and you should be able to arrange
authentication by only joining this DC-less "sub-site" to the
main site of that location so that the DCs there will be both
physically closes and lowest cost -- the DCs are supposed
to suggest these lowest cost DCs to the clients who have
no local DC.

Subnet
Prioritization wouldn't work in this case. There is an
article 200498 where you can configure a DC for membership
in multiple sites but it requires a registry change. I
don't have a full blown test environment and so am leery
of making a registry change on a production DC. I may have
to do it regardless.

It's a fairly minor change -- just do a System State backup prior
to it for extra comfort.