Hi guys, after some advice on Site planning here. I'm an administrator in an organization that has a main office containing around 300 computers in a 2003 environment. We also have offices in 40 other physical locations that are connected to the main office by 2MB or 10MB dedicated leased lines, each location consists of no more than 20 clients (no domain controllers or servers). The current infrastucture consistst of 4 domain controllers in the main office. There are 2 sites conifgured (say site1 and site2) each site has two domain controllers. The main purpose for the site configuration is security ( wont get into the detials unless required). I was wondering if it is possible to configure each of the 40 remote offices as seperate sites even though they do not have a domain controller to help the administration of SMS and also to help me better manage my ip ranges in active driector sites and services. How would i configure active directory sites and services? Would i give each new site instructions on which domain controllers to connect to? Any advice would be great. Thanks Andy

"I was wondering if it is possible to configure each of the 40 remote offices as seperate sites even though they do not have a domain controller to help the administration of SMS and also to help me better manage my ip ranges in active driector sites and services." Yes, you can. Couple of questions though... How do you mean it would allow for better management of IP ranges in Active Directory? IP ranges and what not as far as AD is concerned only comes into play for controlling replication and which DC's clients tend to use. "How would i configure active directory sites and services?" As you did when splitting your DC's into sites. "Would i give each new site instructions on which domain controllers to connect to?" AD authentication as far as which DC to use works via rules of precedence. The first rule is use a DC within the same site. Next would be the closest DC based on site connector costs. So to answer your question, you do not need to "tell the clients" which DC to use. Rules will dictate which DC to use. However, if you want to influence which DC's to use for a certain site, the answer is put the branch office in the same site as the DC(s) in the main office, or through site link costs, make the site the DC's you want the branch office have a lower site link than the other site, or only create a site link to that particular site you want them to use. For example... Branch Office 1 -> site link -> Main Office 1Site Link -> Main Office 2 -> Site link -> Branch Office 2 That would encourage Branch Office 1 to use Main Office 1 site's DC's. "It happens."