AD Sites, Subnets and DFS 1

[lbicher]

I have a situation that I hope someone will be able to assist me with. MY AD structue was built without really knowing the ins and outs of things, namely AD Sites.

My network consists of 6 locations, each with its own child domain, as well as the root domain. When all DCs for every domain was brought online they were installed into the default-first-name-site, regardless of the actual location. This was done due to ignorance of AD features. There are no DCs for any of the child domains out side of their physical location. The DCs for the root domain are in two seperate locations.

We also instituted File Replication using a fault tolerant DFS structure. The servers are all member servers, are all members of the root domain and there is one located in each location.

I primarily need to create sites so I can move the DFS replica in the site to control where the clients get there data from. As it stands now, there is no garauntee that a client will wind up using the replica that is at the same location. This, as you can imagine, is causing problems when everybody winds up going across the WAN to get data they should be able to get locally.

So, I think the solution is to create sites and get the DFS replica members to move to those sites. I found KB article 260857 that talks about what I would need to do the the DFS members, but I'm concern of what may happen to the DCs that are already in those other locations. When I create the new site for locationA and assign the appropriate subnets to it, will those DCs automatically move to that site? Will that need to be done manually or will they just stay in the default-first-name-site with no issues?

I hope that this post didn't ramble on to much, there was a lot of information to pass on. Thanks in advance!

 

[Stevehewitt]

Bloody hell!

Thats one hell of a setup!

I'm a little confused. DFS and AD Sites are really my area, but I assumed that DFS was just a services that made it look like files/folders are all in one place. Sort of like a shortcut file server.
So if you have

\\server1\hr
\\server2\hr-personal
\\server3\marketing
\\server4\sales

etc.

You can make it look like:

\\dataserver\hr
\\dataserver\hr-personal
\\dataserver\marketing
\\dataserver\sales

etc.

I didn't think it replicates files across the network.

The names of sites really arn't important, and knowing generally how AD works, I wouldn't think there is a problem simply re-naming each site.
Sites are really used to help manage large networks. This way you can place policies not only per domain and OU, but also by sites within the forest.

I hope this has helped a little bit. Like I said, i'm not too hot on DFS and may have got completely the wrong end of the stick.

Thanks,

Steve.

 

[trusted]

As long as you have a routed infrastructure setup for each location you should be fine to assign new ip address ranges to each location.

Leave the root domain in the Default-First-Site-Name and then create new sites fo each of the the rest of the location. For the naming convention it is best to use a name that describes the sites location.

After the site are created you now need to move the DC's into the appropriate site, then create the links between each site. See below for more details.

TO create a site.

Right click on the directory named Site, then choose New Site from the list.

To move the DCs.

Under Default-First-Site-Name there is a folder named Servers open it. Right click on the DC's that you want to add to the new sites and choose move from the list and select the appropriate site for the DC/DC's.


Now for the connections (site links) between the sites.

After you have moved the DC's to their respective sites you will need to setup a site link. There is a folder named Inter-Site Transport. Open it, inside you will see 2 more folders IP and SMTP. These are the 2 transport methods that you can use. Unless you are using dialup connections to the remote sites you will be using the IP transport method. In the IP folder you will find DEFAULTIPSITELINK right click and select properties. That will bring up the General tab that is where you add two of the sites(it is pretty self explanatory) to create the site link. After the first one Right click the the IP folder and choose New Site link and repeat the process until you have created the links between all of your sites.

On the general tab in the properties for each site link you can set the intersite replication interval. If you have more then one site link to the same location you can also assign a cost the the link. It will always try to replicate using the lowest cost link first.

 

[bradsm]

Hi there,

A DC should really be in the site which has the subnet the DC sits in attached to it.

This is not an automatic process if the site did not exist when the DC was promoted.

If the site and subnets are already setup when you promote a DC, it will automatically put itself in the correct site.

With your present configuration, I expect clients will not be able to connect to the correct sysvol share or other DFS shares.

A clients resolves the SYSVOL share in the same way as DFS shares. If your DC's are located physically in different sites, but in AD Sites and Services are located in the Default First Name Site, DFS will not be able to work out which DC is the closest to the user.


Use KB260857 to check which sites DFS thinks the DC's and Member servers are in. If all your site and subnet information is correct and DFS still thinks servers are in sites they are not, use DFSCMD to remove and re-add the share to the DFS replica. Using DFSCMD instead of the DFS MMC stops all the data being replicated.

How this helps,

Matt