AD Sites and Services Design Question

[rye8261]

I'm hoping someone can explain to me what to do with Sites and Services. I don't think I fully grasp what I'm supposed to do to do it manually and the automatic way isn't working out because everything keeps going to one site no matter if i set a preferred bridgehead server or not.

Ok, here is our situation. We have 7 locations with domain controllers.
2 sites in Ohio including the corporate office - Corp currently has 3 T1's and is moving to a DS3 soon.
1 site in California - has 2 T1's
3 sites in Virginia - 2 have a 10mb fiber line and 1 has 3 T1's
1 site in Maryland - has 1 T1

What i was thinking i should do is create a few inter-site transports as follows:
1) West Coast ~ will have the California site and then 1 DC from the corporate office
2) Ohio ~ will contain all the Ohio DC's
3) East Coast ~ will contain the Maryland site and then 1 DC from the corporate office
4) Virginia ~ will contain all the Virginia DC's and 1 DC from the Corporate office

I'm just not positive is the corporate office should be included in all of these sites. I believe it should otherwise I can't see how stuff wouldn't replicate throughout the forest.

I would truly appreciate it if anyone could enlighten me on this problem and tell me if I have the correct design or tell me what needs changed.

Thanks you

 

[NortonES2]

You should have seven sites one for each location, the inter-site transports will be created automatically.

Make sure you put the correct IP subnets into each site.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[rye8261]

I'm sorry, I should have stated this. I already have the 7 sites created and that's working fine. The problem that I'm running into is every time I add a new DC, it gets the automatically generated connection to the slowest DC for the inter-site transport site link.

That's what I need help with, creating the inter-site transport site links. Currently all the DC's are in the DEFAULTIPSITELINK site link as I've never understood how to create more.

Can you give advice for that part for the inter-site transport site links i mentioned above?

 

[NortonES2]

No sorry, I have always let Windows create these and not changed them.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[kmcferrin]

But what/where is this "slowest DC"? Is it the original? Is it holding the FSMO roles? Is it the hub of your hub and spoke design?

If you do have a hub/spoke design then it makes sense that one site/DC is the hub, and everyone else will replicate with that site. That will also ensure the lowest amount of replication delay.

If you have a different design, say where HQ in Ohio is the hub, but then one of your Virginia sites is another "mini-hub" and the other Virginia/Maryland sites all replicate from that "mini-hub" (due to high cost or slow site links between Ohio and Virginia, for example) then you would want to modify the DEFAULTIPSITELINK or create additional links. Of course if you do that then your sites that replicate with your "mini-hub" in Virginia will be an extra replication hop away from your main hub back at HQ, increasing replication delay.

By default Windows assumes that you have a hub/spoke design because it is generally the most common and efficient design. If your design needs to be changed to accommodate physical/link topology issues, then you will have to define new site links and the appropriate bridgeheads to accommodate them.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator