Networks

nice MCSE test question:

how many sites? you've mentioned 2

Catalogue servers? Schema server? if your running AD you'll need 2 DCs per domain [redundancy] with AD each DC is a peer. AD replication between DCs takes care of your catalogue/schema server question.

DNS though is a tricky question. The college suits have to decide on whether they want both colleges to talk to each other. If so, you might want to stick both under 1 tier 2 domain and seperate the 2 with subdomains each with their own zones.

you have your AD users and groups already specified in your question, matter of just deciding access permissions.

Keep it as simple as possible.

How many sites? How many geographical locations seperated by slow links do you have?

How many forests? One - unless you have a real serious reason for 2 in the beginning.

You didnt ask, but one domain as well.

How many OUs?- How many groups do you want to delegate management responsibility for?

- one forest
- a root DC that will host the AD structure and the DNS (and maybe WINS if you have NT and W9x)
- two subdomains - one for the boys and one for the girls college
- AD should have nested OUs, such as:
OU for MAINSITE that contains two OUs:COMPUTERS and USERS
In the USERS OU you should create Groups for the 8 departments. And then create another 3 groups for students, employees and faculty. Add the users to the groups accordingly.
These 3 last groups you can create them in the MAINSITE OU.
And these you can use for the two subdomain also.
- because yo have 500 computers, think about the IP range you want to use, (a class B addresse maybe) and use at least two DHCP servers and two DHCP relay agents. (depends a lot about how you want the two "subdomains" to talk one two another and how you have the computers spread in your location).
- of course, you'll have 2 sites for the two subdomains.
- the DC in the two subdomains should be global catalogue servers also
That's an idea of what I would do (at first sight). Then, I can always play with OUs, as I like, if different GPOs would be applied.

Still open huh? like I first said good MCSE question more specifically good exam 70-219 question.

what you intimate here is a physical topology question but is an Active Directory design question as well.

without doing the work for you here's Designing a Microsoft Windows 2000 Directory Services Infrastructure.

Design for simplicity, Design to accomodate change, Design to meet ideal design spec and most importantly, consider alternatives.

Here's the process.

create a forest plan, create a domain plan, create an OU plan and create a site topology plan. you create these plans from gathering information from: administrative structure, business structure, geographical structure, business processes , information flow,communications flow, and how decisions about how all this will work are made. you've only given us physical topology layout, but we need ALL the rest if you want us to design it for you which there isnt room here to do.