Stage Four—Creating a Site Topology Plan
After analyzing your organization’s requirements, the first step in creating a topology plan is to define sites. The main purpose of a site is to physically group computers to optimize network traffic. In Active Directory, site structure mirrors the location of user communities. You must define a site for each of the following:
Each LAN or set of LANs that are connected by a high-speed backbone
Each location that does not have direct connectivity to the rest of the network and
is reachable only by using SMTP mail
The second step in creating a site topology plan is to place domain controllers. Because the availability of Active Directory depends on the availability of domain controllers, a domain controller must always be available so users can be authenticated. For optimum network response time and application availability, you must place at least
One domain controller in each site
Two domain controllers in each domain
In addition, you might need to place additional domain controllers in a site if
There are a large number of users in a site and the link to the site is slow or near capacity
The link to a site is historically unreliable or only intermittently available
The third step in creating a topology plan is to define a replication strategy. An effective replication strategy ensures efficient replication and fault tolerance. In this step you configure site links, which includes designating the method of replication transport, site link cost, replication frequency, and replication availability. You also have the option to specify preferred bridgehead servers.
The final step in creating a site topology plan is to place global catalog servers and operations masters within a forest. The end result of a site topology plan is a site diagram that includes site links and a site link table that provides details about site link configurations, as well as locations of domain controllers and operations masters roles. Depending on the needs of the organization, a site topology plan might also include a table that provides details about site link bridges and preferred bridgehead servers.
To read more about DNS, launch an Internet search engine and run a search for RFC 1034 and RFC 1035. Requests For Comments (RFCs) are the official documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that specify the details for new Internet specifications or protocols. RFC 1034 is entitled “Domain Names—Concepts and Facilities,” and is entitled “Domain Names—Implementation and Specification.”
