For us, it's the ability to run parallel domains for test/development purposes. We have our production domain, my IT test domain, and our LOB application test domain. I'd have another IT test domain if I had the available hardware right now. We are required to test and document all changes to the LOB app and a significant number of people work in that test domain. Running it on VMs or old hardware doesn't cut it gracefully, although that's what I do. Since management won't write the check for additional hardware/licenses, we do what we can. But if we had one beefy server to replace 3, and one server license to replace 3, it would be much more cost effective to do, and would increase performance for the user community. In my last gig, we had multiple domains that were used for development and customer support departments. The support kids especially needed multiple domains to recreate customer environments and various software versions. I can think of a lot of reasons to need multiple domains/forests in an SMB environment. Regulatory compliance, 24x7 availability that mandates full testing prior to implementation in production, customer support domains, etc. Just because a business is small doesn't mean it can't have complex requirements...
********************** Charlie Kaiser W2K3 MCSA/MCSE/Security, CCNA Systems Engineer Essex Credit / Brickwalk 510 595 5083 ********************** > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick > Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 7:10 AM > To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org > Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory wish list > I'm curious, Charlie and Neil. What services do these SMB's > offer that they > need multiple instances of DC's? I realize that a best > practice is to have > multiple servers that can provide some failure tolerant > behaviors, but I'm > wondering what type of work a SMB does that requires multiple > full blown AD > domain instances and therefore multiple servers etc. Can you > expand that? List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
