What are Active Directory Sites and Services for?

[AA]

Hi what does Active Directory Sites and Services allow me
to do? We have 4 remote sites that connect to out HQ via
2mb lease lines, they don't have any servers their end,
they authenicate to our DC's in the HQ.

Kind Regards

AA

 

[ptwilliams]

Sites and services allow you to define sites based on subnets, and localise
network traffic to these sites. By localising network traffic to a site,
you ease the burden on your WAN links. You may not need to worry about
constant traffic across your 2MB lines, but what about 150 remote sites,
with over 200 clients per site and a variety of WAN links, ranging from 64Kb
to 10MB? Some of those really need that localised traffic.

Also, if the line were to go down, the remote users can still authenticate,
perform lookups, etc. basically continue to function without even knowing
the line is down.

In your case, if you wanted to, you could define sites and move servers into
them; this will cause all clients within that site to talk to the server
assigned to the site first.

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

AA,

To expound upon what Paul stated, you basically use ADSS to control Active
Directory replication and assist / aid user logons....pretty much what Paul
stated.

HTH,

Cary