What is the best way to minimize traffic over the frame?
As stated, through the proper definition of AD sites.
Sites are how you control the physical aspects of AD: sites are defined as a
series of well-connected subnets, and are basically used to localise traffic
and control replication.
Replication isn't really an issue with so few users - intersite replication
traffic is compressed, and runs by default, every three hours. If
necessary, you can drop this down to once a week (although once or twice a
Should I put a domain controller (Global Catalog) in every branch?
Yep. With links that slow, you need to localise as much traffic as possible
to the site. Each site will need to be running DC/GC/DNS and possibly DHCP
as well (although that's not a requirement, just an administrators friend).
If you don't have a DC/GC per site (assuming each remote location is a site,
as a 56K link is quite the definition of the need for a site boundary) you
wont be able to contain logon traffic, GPO traffic (s/w distribution will
kill your line), etc. and will see some serious line congestion.
Would it be better to use subdomains?
Not really. For so few users this would be a lot more work, and would
probably not save you anything - in fact, there could be as much if not more
replication traffic, as the GC would need a partial replica of each domain
partition replicated - up to 70. And without GCs cross domain queries and
the like would be a real burden on the WAN.
The best bet, is to download the branch office deployment guide and look to
do it this way.
You'll have two choices with your site links - individual links in a hub and
spoke topology (what I'd go for) or several sites sharing the same links
(it's a cloud topology). It doesn't matter that much, but you'll need to
manually intervene with the links, the link costs, the replication
schedules, etc. and if you have some underutilised lines, may want to add
some redundancy by making those links transitive and giving them a slightly
lower cost, etc.
Hope this helps,
--
Paul Williams
http://www.msresource.net
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I am in the process for designing a network consisting of a main office and
about 70 branch offices with about 10 users in each branch. The branch
offices are each connected to the main office through a 56k Frame Relay.
The
users in the branch office must be able to work locally even if the Frame
goes down. The corporate office must be able to deploy group policy and
software updates from the main office. The domain will be centrally managed
at the main office. The clients range from Windows 95-XP
Questions:
What is the best way to minimize traffic over the frame?
Should I put a domain controller (Global Catalog) in every branch?
Would it be better to use subdomains?
