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DNS advice on a remote site

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by hitchcock4 2 views

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Our main Win2000 network (single domain) is in one location (all the same building). We have about 110 computers here and 2 Domain Controllers.

We will be soon connecting a remote site that will be connected via a fractional T1 line (512 I think).

The remote site will have about 10 users. We will be installing a DC there, running DHCP. The DC will also be a Global Catalog (at the advice of some experts who say that this will increase the speed of lookups when using Outlook and Exchange). I plan to set up replication to replicate every hour.

My question: should the DC at the remote site also be set up to as a DNS server? [My instincts say yes.] If so, should it be set up as a forward lookup zone, or maybe just to do caching?
[I'm not as good with DNS, which is why I am asking.]

BTW, our network is fully Win2000. The current DNS zone is Active Directory integrated.

Thanks!!

8 replies

by kinetechs

That frac T1 isn't too bad so with that low volume, either way should work fine. Especially since the zone transfers will only replcate the delta and not the records that are unchanged.

If I were the engineer, I'd probably start my design for the site with no DC, DNS, and DHCP since the traffic across the wire should be lower having the 10 clients access these services from the main site than having them local and dealing with replication and such. Other factor play in as well though. If you need a server there for other reasons (e.g. file and print, other applications) then you would not be saving anyting by not having those services at the site. But, if there is no other reason to have the server there then it will lower your hardware and software costs.

.02
Cheers!
~Sean

by hitchcock4

Well, we definitely need DHCP to start with. I don't want the computers dead in the water if the communication line goes down.

by hitchcock4

Comment to Sean:
We will have a computer there that is already a file server, so we decided to make it a full DC. (Then we seemed to have grown from there).

by jeaster

If you need the server there, just do an active directory inttegrated zone, and let the local server perform the lookups...it reduces the load across the WAN, and if you lose the WAN, all will not be lost...

by srid

Active Directory Integrated DNS uses the directory for the storage and replication of DNS zone databases. If you decide to use Active Directory Integrated DNS, DNS runs on one or more domain controllers and you do not need to set up a separate DNS replication topology.

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