DFS, 2 locations and domain structure

I've been trying to get a decent domain setup organised with two sites using the same domain.

I was originally thinking DFS would allow me to do roaming profiles, etc... but it seems that the workstations won't necessarily use the DFS server physically closest or indeed fastest.

I was thinking perhaps my mistake was in placing the two DCs on the same domain and not using a sub domain for the second site to help it differentiate but as I've never had to come up with a structure or problem like this before I don't have the experience to know if I'm chasing my tail or on to something.

Anyone able to explain how I can set up my domain and DFS so that workstations located at site 1 will use the Site 1 DC and DFS server and vice versa for Site 2...?


Thanks in advance..

Think I may have found something rather obvious... namely the "lowest cost" setting for the namespace...

Looks like I have some reading ahead and got confused by the use of "site" in the documentation.. Still n'all would be nice to have confirmation that it's really that simple.

AD has a site structure under the domain structure so you can define which site you're in by ip range etc. AD Sites and Services. It also lets you setup the communication channels used by AD for replication if I am remembering right.

This is probably the area to look to split out the sites logicly so that some of the services can work smarter.

Thanks Synack... as ever.. :)

Learned something new and got everything working as expected... Did wonder how the heck to get that all resolved properly and I suspect a lot of my confusion stemmed from earlier docs relating to NT server setups that were more subdomain dependent while 2003 onwards provides for defined sites, subnets, etc... Useful to know..

It scares me how many times I end up reporting back that I'm a complete doofus sometimes but once again here I am, cap in hand... suitably red faced.


The good news is that I didn't post up a billious rant fest about how I couldn't get DFS to refer to the correct site properly, nor mention that I spent hours poring over the DNS records trying to figure out if there was some setting I'd missed..

Nope.. instead, today after 10 days of occassional forays back into the problem I decided to recheck all the overrides on every nameserver but this time I obviously managed to check the target servers as well and found...

... yep, you guessed it... I'd set an override for the server that kept getting all the traffic...


Oh how I laughed... manically..



Only problem now is that I'm still getting slow connection -> load local profile reports on the one machine I've tried so it may not be completely over... Still n'all I feel better for sharing my shame... Now hand me my sackcloth and ashes... Boy do I feel reet dumb!