Active Directory and Child Domains Question

[flipper]

I am trying to accomplish both of these situations on my test network but not having much luck. If you can help me with either that would be great.

Let's say I have 2 servers to make this simplistic:

1) First Situation:
- Forest Root is SillyFace.com (192.168.220.3) - Geographically In NJ
-Child Domain is NY.SillyFace.com (192.168.220.4) - Geographically in NY

What I want to do is have all users log into SillyFace.com, not have the users in NY have to loginto NY as the domain. When I create my Child domain the Netbios name is NY. The problem is that it creates a seperate drop down in say XP for the client. If the users in NY and NJ are from the same company how can this be accomplished? Do I need to create a new Forest root? If so that would seperate it from the centralized domain space - correct?

I did create s new site and subnet in Sites and Services.

2) The second thing I would like to figure out is what if each geographic location needed to have a different IP scheme. For example NY would be 192.168.10.12 and NJ is 192.168.100.9. What does one need to do so each sever can see each other. The Forest root would still be SillyFace.com. yes this is just an example of a domain name.

[texasit]

My suggestion would be to have both both locations on sillyface.com.I would have one DC in NJ and one in NY.I would create two sites one called NewJersey and OneNewYork and put the jersey DC in Newjersey site and New york DC in New york site.Each site should have its own subnet so NY on 192.168.10.0/24 and NJ on 192.168.100.0/24.

[flipper]

So what you are saying is let's assume I create NY first and that is the forest root AD Domain Controller.

If I create NJ next I would want to create this as if it like the diagram below:

A------A <-- almost as if this were a secondary server in case of failure.

Or are you saying something different. If this
is the case, how do I get each of these servers to see each other?

[flipper]

Would I have to create a new forest?

If I choose "Add a domain to an existing domain controller" or "Create a new domain in an existing forest" because the IP Addresses are different the domain can't be found.

[texasit]

You need a router between both sites and usually a VPN of some sort.One subnet on one interface of the router and the other subnet on the other router.
You should have it setup the remote site as a DC in an existing domain.One of your issues is the IP because the server can only communicate with nodes on its subnet of 192.168.10.0 so since the server is on 192.168.100.0.

[flipper]

Thanks that makes sense now. I should have known that.

[DShack]

I'd do exactly the same: don't mess with subdomains, they are almost always unneeded. Just work with different sites within a single AD domain, with a DC at each site.