Need advice on New Branch location

[Chusher3]

My company is about to open a branch. What we are doing is relocating our main office from this location to a new location and making this a branch, there will be about 20 users at the new main office and about 10-15 tops at this branch.

Would it be worth the pain to add a branch server for the 10-15 users? I already have the hardware.

We will have a dedicated T1 connection between the branch and main office.


I also have another question, I am trying to promote a new dell rackmount 2950 server as an additional controller on my current domain, but it says I need to run ADPREP on the forest and domain, but the domain controlller is using Server 2003. Anybody know what could be causing this?

 

[nweaver]

the biggest cost is an additional server license. If you have a dedicated T1, I probably wouldn't worry about it for so few users.

If you domain is setup, and your new server has the correct DNS info, so that it can resolve the DC as the SOA, then running DCPromo shouldn't ask for ADPrep, that is only for NEW domains, not additional domain controllers.

 

[Chusher3]

I already have server licenses for both DC's

The new server has the correct DNS information I assume, and when I go to add it as an additional controller, it seems the correct domain in the correct forum, but it fails once it starts pulling data from the current domain. It fails a couple minutes into gathering data.

Another note, this is an existing network, I am the new one man IT crew, so I don't know a whole lot of back ground on this network. It wouldn't surprise me if this is Domain was first created under Server 2000, would it be possible that no one did ADPREP when the main server was upgraded to 2003?

 

[acaeti]

That is possible I suppose, but I would verify the DNS information first. If your DC is not running DHCP (say some other device is) it is possible that it may see the domain but "not see it". I have had similar problems with workstations that "see" the domain, but don't actually let me work with it (ie add accounts and such) unless pointed at the DC for DNS.

 

[Garion]

My old company ran thousands of branch offices with 2-40 people. None of them had DC's and it worked fine. You don't need the complexity of a DC in the branch.

- G

 

[Chusher3]

Ok that sounds good, I will probably just run the one DC and put the older service as a standard domain member file server for some of our server based applications.

Now I still can't figure out my ADPREP issue, when I run ADPREP on the existing controller it says it has already been run, yet the new server says I can't continue until I use ADPREP.

The DNS is the existing DC, the new server's DNS is pointing to the old server.