I need some advice on setting an AD Enviroment (point in the right direction)

thomas130

test 532532532

dynamik

How are they connected to the main/larger sites? You can have them authenticate over WAN or VPN links, and you wouldn't need any new servers at the smaller sites.

thomas130

6436436436436

dynamik

What else are they going to be doing besides being DCs? DNS? DHCP? File servers? Mail Servers? etc.

DCs really aren't that resource-intensive.

thomas130

42142142142141

dynamik

This should get you started: Planning Domain Controller Capacity: Active Directory (Make sure the left navigation pane is visible - sometimes it doesn't show in Firefox. Just drag the bar over if it's all the way to the left).

You might want to review similar sections for DHCP, DNS, print servers, etc. Moving your DHCP to MS is nice because you can automatically register DNS records for your clients.

Volume licensing will be a great deal cheaper with that many licenses, but I have no idea what the cost would be. Ask a reseller for a quote.

No problem with asking questions; that's what we're here for

Edit: just realized that was a link for for 2003, not 2008. I gotta run, but you can find similar guides for Server 2008 planning on Technet.

thomas130

4214214214214214

blargoe

Why 2008 Enterprise? Particularly for your smaller sites there's no reason to go higher than Standard Edition.

Depending on how many users you are supporting per site you might could get by with hosting AD, DNS, File/Print, etc on the same server. The biggest caveat there is if you have someone at that site who needs to admin the server, you'd have to add them to the domain Administrators built-in group in AD which basically gives them all authority in your domain.