When to add a second domain??? Just bought another company.

[Romuald Thorn]

The company I work for just bought another company that currently has a w2k
domain.

We have about 200 users here, and the remote office has about 16 users. We
will be using VPN to connect the two sites.

What criteria would be used in deciding weather or not to move thier users
to our current domain or have them be a seperate/child domain of us.
What benifits are ther for keeping them in thier current domain vs moving
them to our domain?


We currently have a few other remote offices that have an average of 6 users
per office and I was starting to wonder if they should be in thier own
domain or not.
All of the current remote offices have a DC that is part of our domain.

 

[Simon Geary]

You would typically create a new domain if the security or administration of
the new office will be different. If the same trusted administrators will be
in charge of both domains and a uniform security policy will be applied to
them both then there is no need for a second domain. In which case you can
migrate the user accounts into the existing domain.

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Romuald,

One of the many nice things about WIN2000 is that you can have one domain
with hundreds, if not thousands, of physical locations. You simply make use
of AD Sites and Services and create a Site for each physical location, if
desired.

In WIN2000 there is not necessarily the need to have multiple domains. One
reason, however, that you would consider having a child domain would be the
password policy. Other reasons could be purely political in nature.

I would consider moving them to your current domain. There would be less
administrative overhead with this in the long run. Do they have any special
applications or security configurations that lead to a child domain or an
external trust situation?

HTH,

Cary

 

[Romuald Thorn]

Thanks for all the insight.