I'd like to reduce the number of dual role DC's which act as File & Print/DFS Servers currently in operation in my environment. At the moment I have around 80
We have a DFS target share on each of the 80 File & Print/DFS Servers.
We have a hub and spoke network design, where by we have a Regional Core Site which has 12 branch sites attached to it. Each branch site has once DC which acts as a F&P/DFS server.
At the moment, each branch site has it's own Site & Subnet defined in AD so that the local user will be authenticated by it's local branch site DC.
I would like to demote all 12 branch site DC's to member servers, so they are just plain File & Print/DFS Servers. I would like users to authenticate to the Regional Core Site F&P servers (which are managed by core Infrastructure)
If I demote a branch site DC to a member server, should I leave the IP subnet undefined in AD, and allow the Workstation to automatically find it's next closest DC, or should I add the IP Subnet manually to the Regional Core Site so this handles authentication?
I don't know much about DFS, but if I did the latter, would this affect my DFS structure? is there any problems with putting multiple DFS Servers within the same AD Site?
What would you do?
thanks
Frank
Yahoo! for Good
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