Global Catalog and Replication Links

Hello,

We currently have our domain controller in our data center as a global
catalog.
We just deployed a remote site that is connected via a site-to-site VPN.
This site has a very large number of users, e-mail boxes, and computer
objects.
I have deployed two domain controllers on the site. (primary and a backup).
Can I set one or both of these as a global catalog? Will this effect
anything from the datacenter global catalog?
Should I set one as a global catalog, and the other DC to use caching
from that one GC?

Also, I created a seperate site in the sites and services for this
location. Both domain controllers are there - one has auto generated
connections back the to datacenter, and to the other DC
The other DC, has only auto generated a connection to the DC on site -
why isn't it replicated back to the datacenter as well? do I need to
manually create it?

Thanks.

 

Andy,
regarding the GC question, that would depend on how many domains you have in
your forest. If there is only a single domain, you should designate all of
your domain controllers as GCs. Otherwise, you should keep in mind that
having a GC in a remote site will increase amount of replication traffic to
that site - as well as amount of disk space utilized by the NTDS database.
However, if any of these drawbacks turn out to be significant enough to
affect your decision, then you should configure Universal Group Caching
within the remote site (a GC is needed to validate Universal Group
Membership during logon - so, without a local GC - or Universal Group
Caching configured, if a link to the hub became unavailable, site users
would not be able to log on).
As far as the connections goes - this is the default behavior. A DC within a
site becomes automatically designated as a bridgehead server for a given
naming context. Intersite replication is handled via bridgehead servers -
and those in turn, replicate within their respective sites with other domain
controllers that share the same naming context...

hth
Marcin

<AndyTC@community.nospam> wrote in message
news:uDaQbsI0JHA.3408@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Hello,
>
> We currently have our domain controller in our data center as a global
> catalog.
> We just deployed a remote site that is connected via a site-to-site VPN.
> This site has a very large number of users, e-mail boxes, and computer
> objects.
> I have deployed two domain controllers on the site. (primary and a
> backup).
> Can I set one or both of these as a global catalog? Will this effect
> anything from the datacenter global catalog?
> Should I set one as a global catalog, and the other DC to use caching from
> that one GC?
>
> Also, I created a seperate site in the sites and services for this
> location. Both domain controllers are there - one has auto generated
> connections back the to datacenter, and to the other DC
> The other DC, has only auto generated a connection to the DC on site - why
> isn't it replicated back to the datacenter as well? do I need to manually
> create it?
>
> Thanks.

 

Hello AndyTC@community.nospam,

If youb have a sigle forest domain and no other domains you can make all
DC's Global catalog server. If you have additional domain's in the forest
check this article to see the placement of GC's and also FSMO's:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223346/en-us

In another site there is one server the bridgehead and connect's to the main
site bridgehead, so what you are seeing is ok and by design.

You should also make the site DC's DNS server and configure the clients to
use them as preferred and maybe the main site as secondary DNS. Same on the
main site, choose new site as secondary.

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
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> Hello,
>
> We currently have our domain controller in our data center as a global
> catalog.
> We just deployed a remote site that is connected via a site-to-site
> VPN.
> This site has a very large number of users, e-mail boxes, and computer
> objects.
> I have deployed two domain controllers on the site. (primary and a
> backup).
> Can I set one or both of these as a global catalog? Will this effect
> anything from the datacenter global catalog?
> Should I set one as a global catalog, and the other DC to use caching
> from that one GC?
> Also, I created a seperate site in the sites and services for this
> location. Both domain controllers are there - one has auto generated
> connections back the to datacenter, and to the other DC
> The other DC, has only auto generated a connection to the DC on site -
> why isn't it replicated back to the datacenter as well? do I need to
> manually create it?
> Thanks.
>