Remote office dilemna 1

[jfc1003]

I support a small business (30 employees) running Windows SBS 2003. They recently opened a remote office across town. The remote office has DSL for internet. In order to provide back up capabilities and file access to the end users, I set up a VPN between the two firewalls and applied a group policy to redirect the end users folders back to the server at the main office. The remote office has four computers, but 12 different users share them and any user can use any computer, so it seemed easiest to keep their files on the server at the main office. Well this was way too slow. So I created a share on one of the computers at the remote office and redirected the users files to that share. Then I simply back up that share each night to the main server. Unfortunately, the DSL connection in town is not really stable and goes down a lot. It has been disastrous because when the VPN drops, the computers at the remote office start losing offline files. I dont know how else to describe it. They lose connection to the server, and users can not access their files offline, which they should be able to. Offline files are enabled and the computers syncronize at each log off. Then when the VPN comes back online, the computer goes out and wipes out the users folder on the share. So we lose everything. I wouldnt believe myself, if I didnt see it happen right in front of me multpile times.

Bottom line, with SBS 2003, I can not put another domain server on site at the remote office because that is a restriction of SBS 2003. So can anyone suggest a better way to keep the computers connected to the home office?

 

[fs483]

First off, find out why the DSL line is going down. Might be a bad line card on the dslam, bad filter or modem before going another route. Secondly, YES you can add a second and many more servers if you wish JUST as long as your SBS is the first server in the domain. All other servers CAN be DC or member servers. Both servers MUST be in the same domain because SBS doesn't allow trusts between domains. Now if there's no solution to the DSL line problem then you can put a small server at their location. I have a similar setup with one of my customers where as they have a server at the remote office and their main servers are hosted in my office. A VPN tunnel exists between the 2 servers using Cisco Pix firewalls. Replication is permitted through the tunnel. The users at the remote office work through RDP on the hosted servers. The tunnel is only there to allow replication and access to local and network printers. Files are sometimes accessed through the VPN but the bulk of the work is done by RDP. Good luck !