I’d like to get some ideas and opinions regarding this, especially if anyone has had a similar need…..
Our AD topology to this point has been as simple as can be. Since just about everything on our extended network is connected at high speeds, we have never had to have more than one AD site. We are about to put a couple of DCs at AWS, which of course will require a second site to be defined. This will still be pretty straightforward. Everything but AWS will be on the one existing site and a second site will be added for the one subnet at AWS. I know that even with the two sites defined, some clients may at times use the remote site. This is what I have seen in testing, for whatever reason, but I don’t consider it to be a real problem because I assume it would not happen often. The problem is that our director wants absolutely no cross-site traffic except in the case of a disaster. It is being proposed that the firewall between the sites allow only AD traffic between the DCs themselves. AD clients would be stopped at the firewall. I’m not comfortable with that as a solution because I’m concerned that when clients do try to use DCs at the remote site, it will cause slowness if not failure. Does this seem like a bad idea for that or any other reason? I was thinking that maybe I could use weight and priority within SRV records so that the DCs at AWS would be weight=0 and priority=65535. If I did that, would the clients at AWS honor the site rules over the SRV records weight and priority? I’m guess that would be unpredictable, thus also not a good solution. Thanks in advance for any help. Charlie Sullivan Sr. Windows Systems Administrator
