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ccosner

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Textbook Active Directory setup for remote sites

AD Newbie sorry :-(

I am ready to deploy 12 servers to my remote locations. Can someone give me the textbook setup for AD for these locations. Currently I have 1 domain setup test.local and have all users in that domain in the users folder. What do I need to do to the remote servers so that they replicate only the users for that facility? I am also running exchange under that domain. Can create an OU for each facility and place those users for that facility in the correct OU and replicate only that OU to the remote server?
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buddhole

Microsoft etxt: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787284.aspx
There are several options designing your ad and sites. Easiest way is to have one domain with several sites configured. All DC's replicate their AD databases, including users with each other. The sites must be connected to a main site with a VPN or other connection.
If you're doing 12 sites and you're an AD newbie be careful ! It's important to read much more about this issue to design a correct AD and site topology. Maybe hiring a consultant with practica experience is an option ? You cannot learn the ins and outs of AD design in on EE thread.
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I think you may be off a little bit. By default AD will replicate the entire contents of your main DC to all of the remote sites. It must do this in order to function properly. That is what the DCPROMO does it makes each new DC a replica of the original DC.

Once you have  your 12 new DC's configured you would configure which site points to which DC in active directory sites and services. This way users will authenticate to the closest DC to their site and fail over to a remote DC in the event of a failure of their site DC.

You can create different OU's for the users at the different sites but this is more for ease of management, delegation of duties, and group policy settings than AD replication.

I hope this helps a little bit. Anything else just ask.
I agree with BUDDHOLE active directory is defintely not something that can be learned over an EE post
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xxdcmast-

I was just thinking that I could replicate a small amount of the domain to cut down on the data being transfered over a slow link. Is this not correct?

That is not possible, you replicate all or nothing. If you want to limit the amount of replication data you have to create child domains.
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Joseph Daly
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