Good day,
I’ve got a setup with a Win 2k3 DC acting as the primary DC for our network. We’ve recently acquired another company, and am in the process of building up a network infrastructure on their site. We have 2 Watchguard Fireboxes which are using a managed Branch Office VPN connection. This connection is on full time, and is connecting 2 different class C subnets together via the tunnel (200.194.195.x/24 and 192.168.1.x/24). I am able to ping the far end using the 192.168 addresses and can access resources on the far side as if they were sitting here on my LAN.
Now, the question is this:
I want to setup a server on the far end, and hopefully use it as a DC for our domain on their LAN. From what I’ve read, VPN should be transparent as far as the DCs go, but when it comes to configuring the new server, is there a specific way I need to set it up (Backup DC, Child DC, just promote it to another full fledged DC, etc), and do I need to wait until I’m actually sitting at the far site to do the promotion and DC configuration, or can I it all configured and get the services I want on it (DNS, etc), and then once I know it’s solid, move it to the far side, change the IP address for the local LAN on their end, and then go from there?
I’m a little hesitant about the best way to go about doing this, but due to the fact that it’s a relatively small office (2 dozen users or so tops), it’s both small enough that a VPN tunnel should handle the traffic between here and there, and yet large enough that they need some form of server presence to facilitate smooth operation on their end.
Any and all help/opinions would be appreciated.
Regards,