Multi-Site Single AD - How do you do it?

[CyBeRkId2002]

Hi all,

 

In conjunction with my other question (merging multiple MS tenency's) we are likely to be going down the route of merged AD shortly after (if not in conjunction with!)

 

Schools who have done this, what does your physical infrastructure look like? I suppose my main questions are:

 

• Are your DC's cloud based, or hosted at a central site?
  
• What do you run DHCP / DNS off at each site?
  
• Do you keep a RODC on-prem at each school in the event of an outage
  
• Is any of this feasible with only an FttC connection
  
• For those with local storage, what happens if staff move site to site - resources just not available at hub sites? For info I am not looking at cloud file storage yet - have too many concerns regarding duplication of data, secure storage etc. that I am not ready to cross that bridge quite yet!
  
• 
  

 

Any brief summaries / infrastructure schematics would be greatly appreciated.

[FN-GM]

Hello,

 

I have done this at a MAT and also in private business. My current company has 18 sites across a wide area (literally a plane ride away) with a single AD.

 

Answers are in red.

 

Are your DC's cloud based, or hosted at a central site?

Cantal Site

What do you run DHCP / DNS off at each site?

We don't - It is centralised. Local sites don't have DNS or DHCP.

 

Do you keep a RODC on-prem at each school in the event of an outage

No. Connections have redundancy.

Is any of this feasible with only an FttC connection

Yes. However you need to asses the available bandwidth against your userbase.

 

 

We are in an age that local on site infrastructure is being kept to a minimum. Invest in backup internet connections not local on site hardware. You will also have the benefit of no internet interruption if your primary link does fail. With cloud technology being common place you would be having problems anyway without a redundant connection. Also it's less to maintain not having on site servers.

Edited April 29, 2021 by FN-GM

[localzuk]

• Are your DC's cloud based, or hosted at a central site?
  

At the moment, they are hosted on our central site server cluster.

 

 

• What do you run DHCP / DNS off at each site?
  

No, we have central DHCP/DNS, we have no servers on other sites at all (well, except an MECM DP at our second largest site)

 

 

• Do you keep a RODC on-prem at each school in the event of an outage
  

No, the RODC is more likely to have an outage than the connectivity.

 

 

• Is any of this feasible with only an FttC connection
  

For my setup? No. For a slow connection like FttC, you're going to want onsite servers (the main issue is upload speed - even the best FttC line will only really give you about 20Mbps). We have gigabit fibre between all our sites though (it can be done a lot cheaper than most realise, with point to point leased lines).

 

 

• For those with local storage, what happens if staff move site to site - resources just not available at hub sites? For info I am not looking at cloud file storage yet - have too many concerns regarding duplication of data, secure storage etc. that I am not ready to cross that bridge quite yet!
  

All our staff are just "staff". Moving around makes no difference to their network set up beyond which groups they're in and the "office" fields in AD. Nothing changes with their files.

Edited April 29, 2021 by localzuk