Setting Buildings Up as Different Sites

[BKGarry]

After Network Manager Interviews on Monday (which i did not get ) it was suggested that because of the 2 buildings withing my actual school site and the cost of putting in another 4gb worth of fibre between the 2 buildings before BSF.

What is the likeliness/Ease of putting one of my domain controllers, or even a new one, over in the Main building and setting it up as a new site that replicates our active directory and SYSVOL folders so log on time would be taken away from the Fibre Line, Leaving it to Shared Resources, Internet and Email oh and the home folders.

Any ideas?

Garry

[ChrisH]

That should be fairly easy. All you need to do is pretty much what you have said. Make sure you make the DC you move a GC though. What is your current connection between the building though? The logon traffic may be to do with more than just authenticating profiles maybe etc? What Im saying is moving a DC may not improve the situation.

[BKGarry]

At the moment there is 4 Gig fibre connect which splits to supply 2 gbs to each half of the main building.

All My profiles here are mandatory or supermandatory and they are kept in the sysvol share.

GC???? sorry I try my best to aviod abrieviations as there are so many working in education now

[GrumbleDook]

Global Catalog ... search for a recent thread on FSMO roles and there is a mountain of information in it.

[BKGarry]

Lol both XSERVER (exchanger server) (seconday DC) and ASERVER (the PDC and thats it) are GCs incase one goes down we still have the other.

Gaz

[petectid]

I cannot see as Chris suggests that anything would be improved, or indeed why there is a problem, the link seems to be suffient to deal with any traffic especially authentication, and mandatory profiles. Are we missing any info here.

[BKGarry]

Not really except for there are 3 ICT suites of 30pcs in the other building away form the server. And every Room (27) has a dedicated teachers PC for Lesson Monitor, IWBs and Projectors.

All of the Admin staff are over there that use sims for other uses (16 USERS) and then you have the teachers using SIMS assesment Module.

All the servers are on our side and this building has 5 suites of 30 PCs and 24 teachers machines.

The other building also had 20 staff room pcs and the wirless access to the mobile classrooms for laptop use out there.

[plexer]

Ok just for a moment lets just forget about gbs of fibre as that is mainly irelevant.

Give us an idea of your current topology and how things are connected i.e core switch in server, fibre connection to cabinet in other building with xxxx switch.

A picture would help a lot as would details of active equipment to give us a fuller picture.

Ben

[BKGarry]

right We have 55 PCs into the main switch, 2 GB to 2 Suites, 1 gb to another room and 1 gb that goes to one suite plus 18 pcs.

The server have the follwing into the main switch,

ASERVER (PDC) 2x1gb
FSERVER (home folders) 2x1gb
MSERVER (shared resources) 2x1gb
PSERVER (Printers) 1gb
SSERVER (SIMS) 2x 1gb
TSERVER (KS3 Tests) 1gb
XSERVER (Exchange and SDC) 2x1gb

OPENCDSERVE (Avantis crap) 1gb
INET1-5465 (ISA and Websense) 1gb

Then to the other builing is 4gb (trunked as 2 2gb)
This then splits to the far side and nearside through GBit Switches
Near side runs about 50 PCs straight from the siwtches then a GB link to room 27 (30Machines) and then a switch in the staff room with a 1gb link that run around 30pcs and the staff room wireless.

The farside had about 80 PCs, from 2 suites and all the admin staff an teachers machines on that side. This also has the wireless (WPA-SPK) to the field and mobiles.

It also runs a switch with 16 devices plugged in down in reception)
Is that enough details.

[GrumbleDook]

To be honest it is not much different to the infrastructure here and we are in one main building ... with a few smaller buildings to one side.

We have on particular block that has an 8 core of fibre going to it, 1 pair used in that block, 1 pair used in an adjacent block (Connection is barrelled so the pair effectively goes straight from the server room to block B) and a 3rd pair that is then taken over to a 3rd block ... the 4th pair is incase something goes wrong.

All run a 1Gb ...

We do notice things going slow but that is mainly down to the kit being used ... ie when students forget that they should be working straight off the network when editting a 3 GB video file.

[plexer]

BKGarry: Excellent thanks for the added details I'm sure that will help.

From the connectivity that you allready have to the other side of the site then I don't see that you should be having any problems.

However another benifit of moving a server is that you would have some redundandcy in the case of a server room problem, power outage to that building etc...

We have all our server eggs in one basket with fibre links to all the outlying cabinets.

Server room 4108GL to SEN is 1 4 core fibre.
Server room 4108GL to DT is 1 4 core fibre.
Server room 4108GL to ART is 1 4 core fibre.
Music building has a 4 core fibre running back to ART which is then looped using the spare 2 cores there back to the server room.
Server room 4108GL to Science is 1 4 core fibre.
Server room 4108GL to IT Suite 1 is gigabit copper.
Server room 4108GL to IT Suite 2 is gigabit copper.

All fibre is running 1GB full duplex.

Ben