Designing a two-site active directory network

By raheem

Implementing a two-site active directory network is remarkably simple. The following diagram shows a design that I implemented a couple of years back. The client did not have any AD infrastructure at the time and they needed a way to share documents between their two offices in Manhattan and Long Island. The solution involved setting up a single AD domain with two sites. A server was dropped at each location that performed authentication, file and print services. The two sites were connected via site to site VPN implemented thru a Cisco PIX 501 firewall. Each site had DSL access of 3Mb/768Kb. I wanted to implement DFS to make the file-sharing simpler, but it tipped the clients’ budget (they were a nonprofit). Active Directory Sites and Services was used to manage replication traffic between the sites. It worked fairly well and the users were able to share files between the offices.