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mchad65

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Do I need a seperate AD site/DC for small office(s)

I have a 12 person office about 4000 miles away (in the EU) from our main office (US).  Currently, we have a site to site VPN (10meg, about 80ms latency) which the remote users use for AD and Exchange.  They have a few local servers, so file read/write latency isn't an issue.  Exchange is also fine.  Everything works fine, so I have been working under "If its not broken, don't fix it"

I just wanted a sanity check to see if setting up a new site and putting a DC in that location would buy me anything.  Additionally, if done, how would that impact the Exchange server (single instance, 2010, one Mailbox server and one CAS/Hub server).  We are also setting up another 2-3 person remote office in the US which I am initially going to continue to support as we do for remote workers (VPN Client connections all day).  

The total organization size is small (<100 users), so I don't want to build unnecessary infrastructure, (read: I have a microscopic budget) but I also want to do it right.  

Thanks.
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Joseph Daly
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mchad65

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That was my thought.  Now, to keep costs down, since the file server is 2008R2, would it be sacrilege to simply install AD services on it?  (thinking back to 1997 when my first NT server was an all in one, file, exchange, AD)
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Both good responses.  I have 3 DC's in my main office infrastructure, one in the office itself (pdc role) and two a data center (Both bdc's).  So I have redundancies there.  I'll look into the RODC idea, I hadn't thought of it actually.  Thanks both of you.
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