Lets design a network....

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Ok, so I get a phone call from one of my clients today as they are going to open another office and want to get ‘some IT sorted’ for it. After a brief chat on the phone they basically want users in site B (the new site) to connect to site A (HQ) to access files etc etc. Site A has a DC (also a file server) and an Exchange Server.

My first thought was to install a point to point VPN between the two sites and install a Terminal Server in site A. Users in site B would have fairly low spec PCs and remote desktop onto the Terminal Server keeping traffic on the WAN fairly low.

Had to chuck that idea out the Window! After further investigation it looks like there will be around 10 users that will have laptops and will be at either site A or site B depending on what projects they are working on. Therefore if a user with a laptop logs on at site B they will have to authenticate across the VPN tunnel and all the shared folders will be located at site A. This will be sloooooooow.

To get around this I am going to suggest installing another DC in site B (to speed up authentication) and also configure DFS (distributed file system) to replicate the shares on site A to site B to speed up access to the files.

The problem is that I haven’t configured DFS across multiple sites before, I have on one site (to add fault tolerance) but in this case it’s going to be used purely to improve file access speed.

Has anyone used DFS in this way before?
Few linkies:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Windows2003-Distributed-File-System.html
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...f865-4200-9ae9-66785e5e87c81033.mspx?mfr=true

Any other suggestions welcome! Can some of the MCSE peeps suggest something I havent heard of before?

 

Thats the plan (well point to point VPN over ADSL broadband), just needed a method to configure the shares so that there are no performance issues at either site.

Just heard today that my network proposal has been approved, also site A is being upgraded to Windows 2003 as the hardware running 2000 is falling to bits.

Will update this post after all the installation drama!

 

Thanks for the tip

Spoke to the MD today and we are going to do a test on our own network before the install. I had a look on the server today and there isnt any shared data so this will be new setup for them.

 

Thanks for the tip, waiting for the servers to arrive then its all go!

 

Update: This network is now live (busy week for me) and all seems well so far. It’s always good to see a network you have designed on Visio go live!

DFS is working well. I have installed Windows Server 2003 R2 and DFS is more advanced than the standard version, it is listed as an additional Windows component in R2 even though the standard version is already installed.

DNS lookups are working ok as well on site B with the new DC (also a GC) so looks like the additional server was worth installing.

Just need to pick up the cheque for the installation now, cha-ching!