New AD from scratch

[pauljmiddleton]

Hi All,

 

I'm an IT Manager for a group of 4 secondary schools and we're about to embark on a project of migrating all the schools into a new Forest, the plan would be to have this completed by September next year and I just wanted to sound out some ideas as we have a completely blank canvas and want to start out the best way we can.

 

Some questions:

 

• At present the plan is to create a single forest/single domain to keep things simple, but we have discussed single forest\multi domain but are concerned about keeping things simple with a view to office 365, ADFS, Azure and of course local services.
  
• Considering how we deal with data across these sites, for example a member of staff may be working in one school in the morning and another school in the afternoon, the schools are linked with a 100mb connection between but this also provides internet access so don't want to swamp it with too much replication traffic. So storage in each school? Don't really have the money to replace SANs in each school ATM.
  
• I think there is a huge list of questions so perhaps better to also just ask if anybody has done this recently and how they approached it? Suggestions, recommendations, gotchas?
  

 

Thanks

[jamesb]

What you're describing sounds like a dream to me, the opportunity to actually do things right.

 

Just a few suggestions (feel free to take them with a pinch of salt) from my own experience/knowledge.

 

A single domain sounds fine, but do make sure you look into AD Sites as you may want to have separate ones between schools.

 

Your data option may well be best solved with something like OneDrive for Business, or another form of online storage. Documents can then travel with the user - though this does obviously raise some issues. Alternatively if you've got the budget there are a lot of ways to minimise replication traffic while still allowing storage across multiple sites.

 

'fraid I haven't done this myself, as I've never had the chance to start with a blank canvas. All I can really suggest is enjoy the opportunity to set up something beautiful, and try not to suffer too much when you have to let loose the users upon it.

[pauljmiddleton]

Yes, I have to admit, we're really enjoying starting from scratch, slightly worried about what Sept 2015 will bring but yes.

 

Yeah, sites and services is something I've used before, I've come from industry and we had 5 large offices across the UK and about 30 branch offices so it's something we used heavily.

 

I agree with cloud storage, I think that is certainly something we will be using, office 365 is already setup and fully used in one of the schools and in trial in the others (although those trials will be closed down and merged into one o365 tenant). That school is already using One Drive for Business for staff storage and office 365 for emails, it's kind of our test system really.

 

We're also looking to move some services to Azure (although that may not start until after we've finished the merger), the plan is to use Azure for a DC and ADFS server, SCCM server with distribution points at each school, help desk server, SCOM Server, library systems etc.

 

Paul

[JRowley]

I envy you, I really do.

 

I would question how suitable cloud storage is, it has obvious benefits, but 4 secondary schools all loading/saving to the cloud? Will your connection hold up to that? Personally I would prefer internal replication between sites over potentially long delays if working on large files. Something you will have to consider, either way your going to be using bandwidth somewhere.

[pauljmiddleton]

I agree with you there JROWLEY, the plan at present would be to allow staff to work using One Drive for Business client syncing locally to their HD so changes only, as for SCCM that's kind of why we need the local distribution points, I agree that the bandwidth would simply not be enough for direct cloud working, sad but true.

[MatthewL]

Have file servers on each site, staff will have a home site they are member of and their data can stay there, you will not notice a few files been opened over a 100mb connection, keep it simple, DC on each site as a minimum, file server too with data for each school unless you want you could have one site as a main data centre and another as a secondary site

[pauljmiddleton]

We don't have that many staff working across schools, you are correct, the only issue with that is say the Head of English is in school 1 80% of the time and then the other 20% is in school 2 how would they access the student\staff shares in school 2 easily? You could map drives but as the trust grows how do you keep mapping different drives?

[Roberto]

We don't have that many staff working across schools, you are correct, the only issue with that is say the Head of English is in school 1 80% of the time and then the other 20% is in school 2 how would they access the student\staff shares in school 2 easily? You could map drives but as the trust grows how do you keep mapping different drives?

 

Not sure what you mean here - do you mean mapping drives to their home shares on different sites? Use DFS to replicate traffic between sites for staff home shares (maybe only the ones that need to travel) and have one mapping to one share that's the same on all sites (or fast enough WAN links to do the similar). Or did you mean mapping to other people's shares? Give them shortcuts that point to share UNC paths rather than drive letters that are themselves pointers to share UNC paths.