Sites and IP ranges

[quinla01]

Hi guys, after some advice on Site planning here. I'm an administrator in an organization that has a main office containing around 300 computers in a 2003 environment. We also have offices in 40 other physical locations that are connected to the main office by 2MB or 10MB dedicated leased lines, each location consists of no more than 20 clients (no domain controllers or servers).

The current infrastucture consistst of 4 domain controllers in the main office. There are 2 sites conifgured (say site1 and site2) each site has two domain controllers. The main purpose for the site configuration is security ( wont get into the detials unless required).

I was wondering if it is possible to configure each of the 40 remote offices as seperate sites even though they do not have a domain controller to help the administration of SMS and also to help me better manage my ip ranges in active driector sites and services. How would i configure active directory sites and services? Would i give each new site instructions on which domain controllers to connect to?

Any advice would be great.

Thanks

Andy

[fizban2]

without having a domain controller at each site, there isn' t much way to organize each office into a site, now your site 1 and site 2 and main office can be setup, you could configure the sites to go to the closest DC by setting up the ip ranges with the closest site after you create them in sites and services.

[cluberti]

If all of the DC's are at one site, then you won't get any AD site-specific benefits, but you can still configure each site with a class C and set that class C up as a site in AD Sites and Services if it will make life easier for you. Your users will still be going back to the central office to log in, check security tokens, etc., but if it's management that's the issue there shouldn't be a problem setting up 40 sites in AD Sites and Services.