Domain design question

[brichr]

I have 10 offices separated by reliable WAN VPN connection, but each office only had 20 or 30 users. The head office had 150 users. I am trying to design and Active Directory network, should each office be a domain or just a site. Could I get away with just one domain and 10 sites? Or should I do two domains like east and west.

Does anyone have a similar network topology? I would not mind one domain for ease of administration. I have 6 IT guys all in the west cost office. I know this question warrents a long detailed answer but I just wonder about what other peoples network might look like in this case.

 

[pagy]

1 domain and 10 sites would be my choice here.

How quick are your WAN links??

My other preference would be for a DC at each site and with 20 or 30 users at each site have universal group caching enabled on each DC at the remote sites

Paul
MCSE 2003


If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Scott Adams

 

[brichr]

Thanks for the response. The wan links are T1 or higher, and each office is going to have a local file server and local printers. I can make each office a site with a DC for authentication. Does that work?

1 Domain and each office being represented by and OU I think would be the easiest to deploy and administer.

 

[pagy]

That works

Paul
MCSE 2003


If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Scott Adams

 

[58sniper]

One forest and one domain is certainly the way I'd go. In fact, you don't necessarily need a DC in each of those offices if there are only 20 people in them. That's a story for another time, though.

Putting them into their own OUs is more of an administrative/delegation issue than anything else. And, it's easily changed (for the most part) after everything is deployed. Not the case for the singe/multiple domain argument.

FWIW - We have a client who did the multiple domain model. We were engaged to flatten that from 29 domains down to 1 because the added administrative headache wasn't worth it. Things run much simpler that way now. And the client is very glad they flattened their forest. The amount of time they were spending on cross-domain rights issues was staggering.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author The Complete Reference: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

 

[brichr]

thanks for the real world tip. Yeah my whole network although physically large and separated is only 350 users total. All the docs on domain planing talk about offices/domains with 4k or 10k users, so I did not think creating domains for each little office would be the way to go.

Thanks again for the hints.