I am new to AD and have to set one up for a client and realize that the choices I make now affect the client forever and am concerned about making a good choice for their AD root domain name. I would like to explain the setup and get some feedback on the best choice. The names are ficticious and are there for descriptive purposes.
Client has an existing Internet Domain of lawfirm.com. There is presently about 50 workstations at the main office with a Netware 5 Server that will be phased out once this new WIN2K3 Server is setup. They have an existing standalone Win2K Server as well. They also have a small satellite office in city2 with 2 workstations (no VPN or connection other than dialup Interenet). I have already setup AD with the root domain name city1.lawfirm.com. This seemed logical, but I am now wondering if it is best before continuing with setting up users and such. I also found a reg hack that would prevent the DC from putting an A-Record on the DNS so I guess I could setup the AD root domain the same as the Internet domain of lawfirm.com.
What recommendations would you give on the setup? Leave it like I have it now at city1.lawfirm.com or use the same root domain name as the Internet website and email at lawfirm.com?
Also, any helpful info on migrating the Novell Users and switching the workstations login or getting Novell to register the users with AD, etc.
I am also wanting to join the standalone WIN2K server to AD and setup a DFS root with it and the new WIN2K3 server. Is there a way to get the W2K3 Server to take 95% of the load on this DFS root? The WIN2K Server is running some specific applications and doesn’t have near the horsepower of the W2K3 Server. The W2K3 Server will be the PDC and will serve files from the DFS root. I want the DFS root in case of a Server outage so clients can still get their files. I guess I also need to setup the Win2K Server as a BDC?