Active Directory Branch Office Guide Series
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The Active Directory Branch Office Guide was created to help network managers, system integrators, and consultants involved in Active Directory branch office implementations. It describes all the tasks and decisions that must be completed to develop the Active Directory design for a large branch office deployment. It also describes how to develop a deployment plan and provides the step-by-step deployment procedures required to implement the design. While this guide is focused on branch office deployment, the issues and concepts discussed here will frequently have relevance in other scenarios.
On This Page
About this Series Job Aids Scripts Download All Chapters Acknowledgements
About this Series
Does your organization have a number of small remote sites?
Are those sites connected, by slow links, to a regional hub or a corporate data center?
Are you planning to use the Active Directory service in Windows 2000 Server to support them?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, this resource is for you. Deploying Active Directory in a large branch office environment, where each branch has a domain controller locally, can be a complicated procedure. This guide was developed, based on customer experiences, to simplify the process by providing a series of easily understandable steps and the procedures necessary for you to achieve your goal.
This series has two sections, which are available on this website or can be downloaded:
Job Aids
Job aids are designed to help you be more efficient when planning your Active Directory design and deployment. Job Aid 1 (the Deployment Planning Template) is a comprehensive questionnaire developed by Microsoft Consulting Services that you can use to record much of the information required when creating your deployment plan. The remaining job aids are spreadsheets that you can use to track the progress of your deployment.
The following job aids are included as part of the Active Directory Branch Office Guide:
Deployment Planning Template (Adboja01.exe)
This template can be used to help collect the necessary information for your planning process (Word document).
Hub Site Checklist (Hubsite.exe)
This spreadsheet can be used to track the hub site configuration as it is created.
Staging Site Checklist (Sitechek.exe)
This spreadsheet can be used to track the staging site configuration as it is created.
DC Staging Checklist (Dcstage.exe)
This spreadsheet can be used to track a staged domain controller as it is staged and moved to its final destination.
Download all Job Aids (ADAids.exe)
Scripts
Included with the Active Directory Branch Office Deployment and Operations Guide are a set of scripts, some of which require the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit. The chapters in the Active Directory Branch Office Deployment and Operations Guide explain what the scripts do as well as how to use them.
Quality Assurance scripts
Used to monitor an Active Directory environment.
Branch Office Domain Controller Deployment scripts
Help you implement the processes in this guide so that you can easily build your Active Directory Branch Office environment.
Configuration scripts
Used to configure your environment in preparation for deploying your branch office domain controllers.
Connection Object scripts
Used to create connection objects between your hub site bridgehead servers and your branch office domain controllers.
Download the script files (Adscript.exe)
Download All Chapters
Click here to download all chapters (ADAll.exe)
Acknowledgements
The team that produced the Active Directory Branch Office Guide came from a wide range of areas within Microsoft and from many of our partner organizations. The following people make a substantial contribution to the writing, developing, and testing of this content.
Content Lead
Andrew Mason, Microsoft Prescriptive Architecture Group
Key Authors
Michael Kostersitz, Microsoft Consulting Services; Andreas Luther, Microsoft Windows 2000 Product Group; David Orbits, Microsoft Windows 2000 Base Systems Group; John Hudson, Microsoft Consulting Services; John Gray, Microsoft Consulting Services; Rob Lane, Microsoft EMEA Regional Support Centre; Herbert Mauerer, Microsoft EMEA Regional Support Centre; Saskia Schott, SQLSoft+; Didier Gautier, Microsoft Product Support Services; Bryan Hunt, Microsoft Consulting Services.
Reviewers
Alessandro Onelli, Microsoft Consulting Services; Tom Coyle, Microsoft Consulting Services; Jeff Parham, Microsoft Windows 2000 Product Group; William Lees, Microsoft Windows 2000 Product Group; Levon Esibov, Microsoft Windows 2000 Product Group; Mark Szalkiewicz, Microsoft Consulting Services; Bryan Urakawa, Digital Counterbalance; Ruud van Velsen, Microsoft Consulting Services; Samuel Devasahayam, Microsoft Windows 2000 Product Group; Michael Kostersitz, Microsoft Consulting Services; Carlo Sturla, Microsoft Consulting Services.