Re: Active Directory Site Design and Replication

Brian,

Thanks for the information and tips. I think I'm starting to
understand the direction I should go in, however I have a couple more
questions related to the topic. I'm assuming that an individual site
link will be required for each spoke? All the articles I've read
suggest creating site links with only two sites. Hence, Home Office
(hub) to Remote Site (spoke). I understand this and it makes sense -
especially applying costs, intervals, etc.

Now, what about Connections? This network is setup with Connections
for every Site on both DC's in the Home Office (which should mean
"Replicate From" all sites). They also have connections to the Home
Office DC's in each Site. If I understand correctly, this interferes
with the KCC? It's kind of strange to me, which is adding to my
confusion. Shouldn't the Connections be Automatically Generated via
the KCC? Why add Connections? And to add to the confusion, we have
one site that has Auto Generation disabled. This site Replicates from
the Home Office AND to all Sites on the MPLS Cloud. I cant figure out
how to re-enable Auto Generation.

To sum things up, I want to make sure the network is running
efficiently. My whole thought process on this started when I read an
article suggesting to distribute the sites according to bandwidth and
cost. It got me thinking - should we have hubs off the Home Office
that localize the replication rather than connect all Sites back to
the Home Office? For example, our Home Office would connect to our
512k links, then add a link to the 384k links, then the 256k links.
I'm trying to find the URL - the article was based on a tiered
approach to designing the AD Site Topology.

Let me know what you think. I appreciate your help and expertise!

Thanks




On Apr 9, 7:53 pm, "Brian Desmond [MVP]" <b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi,

Given you're running MPLS you could just run things as they are and you'd be
OK. Your topology is not optimal, but if it ain't broke, you might not want
to fix it.

If you're set on redoing things, I'd probably just set it up hub/spoke and
hook all the spokes up to the hub. Just cost the links according to speed
and when the hub site goes dwon it will choose an ideal partner to replicate
with in terms of link speed.

I'd just link the 60 subnets to the home office or balance them out amongst
higher speed/least utilized sites. Up to you really.

--
Thanks,
Brian Desmond
Windows Server MVP - Directory Services

www.briandesmond.com

<falk...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1176160022.832863.220090@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

All,

I'm being presented with a situation and would like to get some
suggestions/input. I'm currently working on a project for a company
that involves improving network performance, load balancing, etc. One
leg of this effort concerns the way Active Directory is designed from
a Sites/Replication perspective. Here's the background:

The company has a relatively small AD - possibly in the medium size
network. About 1500 workstations and 150 servers are on the domain.
The model is Single Forest/Single Domain. The Central Office is home
to many of the servers, including two domain controllers. The network
also has around 90 locations on an MPLS cloud. Of these 90 locations,
30 have one domain controller and are setup as a Site in AD. Each
Site only has one DC. Each Site is running on links ranging from 256k
to 512k circuits. The Home Office has a 3mb connection to the MPLS
Cloud. Currently, all the Sites are configured to use the
DEFAULTIPSITELINK that is installed with AD. No Site links have been
setup.

With that background, does anyone have a good, sound method of
designing this topology? How should each site be linked, etc. I also
need to think about where to place the other 60 subnets that do not
have a site. Should those point to a site or back to the Home Office?

Any suggestions will be appreciated. I just want to make sure that AD
is configured properly and making effective use of the bandwidth.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Active Directory Site Design and Replication
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