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OK to have off-site Domain Controller?

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by josh92982

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I have 20 different locations to manage. All of them are currently on separate domains, which obviously creates an administrative hassle. They are all connected back to the corporate office via a DSL or cable connection.

If joined all of the computers at these locations to the same domain, hosted here at the corporate office, would that be the end of the world? Or would things still work OK?

I would enable cached credentials, for when the DSL has problems and whatnot.

Am I asking for trouble by having no domain controller physically on-site?

3 replies

by cmiller5400

If you currently have servers at each location, then just redeploy them as DC's for the new Domain that you want to create. If not, no big deal, the cached credentials will work, although depending on where the workstations get their DNS, connectivity to the internet may be an issue.

by cg it

what's one of the biggest reasons for creating seperate domains in a forest?

Microsoft answer: because of differing password policies.

So if your 20 locations all require different password polciies, combining them into one domain would get rid of that.

Here's an Windows IT Pro article on why you might want to have seperate domains.

http://emea.windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/41271/what-are-some-common-reasons-for-adding-domains-in-a-windows-2000-or-later-environment.html

So if you haven't thought of all the reasons there might be for actually having seperate domains, then you might want to reconsider your idea until you've researched out what the ramifications are of combining 20 seperate domains into one big one.

The reasons for having a DC at a site is that your WAN links are overutilized, users take to long to log in or gain access to resourses. But if you have 20 domains at 20 sites, there's not only a DC at the site but probably a DNS server as well that provides DNS services for the site.

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