WAN, Sites, Subnets

[fmsmith]

We are new to 2000 server and AD and are going to setup a
new domain on two locations that are connected over a fast
WAN (T1 to internet with VPN). My questions is : Do we
need two sites ? I know this would be the intended way to
configure, but the connection is fast over the WAN. What
would be the advantage of two sites vs one site ?

THanks !

Frank

 

[chris]

with two separate sites, you could set schedules on replication. But since
you have a fast, reliable link between locations then they could just be in
the same site.

chris

 

[Cary Shultz [MVP]]

-----Original Message-----

Frank,

You do not want to have only one Site. A T1 is hardly
fast. Consider that a T1 is 1.544Mbps while a LAN is
100Mbps. It is not even close! I speak from experience
in this matter.

Anyway, set up the two Sites. Having a Site-to-Site VPN
is a really excellent idea. Your users in Site1 will
authenticate against the DC(s) in Site1 and your users in
Site2 will authenticate against the DC(s) in Site2. You
really do not want users in Site1 to authenticate against
a DC in Site2...

I would have at least two DCs in each Site. I would also
have at least one GC and one DNS Server in each Site.
And, naturally, at least one DHCP Server in each Site.

If you are interested I can forward you several links
detailing setting up Sites and all that entails. I can
also forward you links explaining how both WIN2000 and
WINXP Clients locate a Domain Controller.

I do not know how many users are in your AD Domain.
Please STRONGLY consider having a File and Print Server
for each Site as well and please do all possible to
*minimize* users from Site2 going to the file server in
Site1. We had several corrputed MS Word 2000 documents.
And do not even talk about PowerPoint Presentations! ;-)

Strongly take into account that you will be dealing with
both Intrasite and Intersite replication now. Intrasite
is every 15 minutes. Intersite, however, is every 180
minutes. This can be one of the drawbacks of having
multiple Sites. You really need to plan things. If you
have 10 people starting tomorrow you better create their
accounts and add them to everything necessary this
afternoon - especially if some of them will be in
the "other" site. Better yet, do it a few days in advance.
However, this is about the only possible drawback to
having multiple Sites. And you can change this Intersite
Schedule. I did to 90 minutes. Install the Support Tools
and you can use ReplMon to force Replication. There are
also several other very useful utilities, which is why I
mention them here. You can also just as easily use the
ADSS MMC to force replication.

HTH,

Cary
.

Hey,

Just wanted to say that I hope that I did not come across
like I am telling you want you want or do not want. I re-
read my post and think that it comes across that way. Not
my intention.

I was trying to share with you my experiences. I had a
very similar situation where there were two buildings
located about 0.5 miles from each other. Were it simply
one Site there would have been problems! Two Sites was
definitely the way to go for us.

Anyway, just wanted to clarify. No one can tell YOU how
to run your environment because no one but YOU is there
and no one but YOU knows your environment's "quirks".

HTH,

Cary