Should I use child domains?

[jonwilbanks]

Should I use child domains on a network spanning 4 buildings with less than 100 clients per building and all buildings on same site(within walking distance)?
Any advice will be greatfully considered.

 

[globalstrata]

It all depends on how you interconnect those buildings. If you have a fast connection, I would use Organizational Units intead. Specially if people in other buildings have to use resources that are located in other buildings since it is easier to locate resources instead of having to navigate between domains. In addition, it is easier to administer since there are less user groups to administer, to add users to, to give permissions to files, etc.(instead of having local, global groups for each domain) Less Domain Controllers may be used instead of one per domain (or two per domain for redundancy)

If your buildings have low bandwidth inter-connections between them, the frequent replication traffic generated in a single domain setup may be enough to overwhelm the connection. The cost of maintaining faster interconnection lines may outweigh the benefits of a single domain, especially if each location has qualified network administrators already on staff.

Hope this helps,

Gladys Rodriguez
GlobalStrata Solutions

http://www.globalstrata.com

 

[jonwilbanks]

Thanks so much for the advice.

We have fiber between the buildings and we have no other network administrators, I'm it.