StandAlone or Domain member

[Fred Yarbrough]

We have an AD domain and ~2000 users. Of those users we have ~ 800 that are
a mix of remote/offsite, home, traveling constantly, traveling half of the
time, and rarely traveling users. We are wondering what the best way to
configure these users machines is (standalone or as domain members using
cached passwords). Is there some sort of guidelines for when a machine
should be a domain member instead of a standalone configuration? We are
just trying to standardize on something that makes sense. All of our
laptops are W2K or WXP.


Thanks,
Fred

 

[Danny Sanders]

That guideline would be if you want to manage them from a central location
add them to the domain. If you want to manage them individually, don't add
them to the domain.

I would add all of them to the domain.

hth
DDS W 2k MVP MCSE

 

[Matjaz Ladava [MVP]]

the main question here is how long the clients are offline from the network.
If this time is quite long (few weeks), then the machines will have problem
logging to the network when users came back, as passwords for computer
accounts will change on DC's and go out of sync with the client computer.

--

Regards

Matjaz Ladava, MCSA, MCSE, MCT, MVP
Microsoft MVP Windows Server - Active Directory
(e-mail address removed), (e-mail address removed)

 

[Jerold Schulman]

We have an AD domain and ~2000 users. Of those users we have ~ 800 that are
a mix of remote/offsite, home, traveling constantly, traveling half of the
time, and rarely traveling users. We are wondering what the best way to
configure these users machines is (standalone or as domain members using
cached passwords). Is there some sort of guidelines for when a machine
should be a domain member instead of a standalone configuration? We are
just trying to standardize on something that makes sense. All of our
laptops are W2K or WXP.


Thanks,
Fred

I use domain members, and tip 2240 in the 'Tips & Tricks' at
http://www.jsiinc.com for this scenario.


Jerold Schulman
Windows: General MVP
JSI, Inc.
http://www.jsiinc.com