How to Create Active Directory Sites in Active Directory Sites and Services

This post will describe how to create a new site in Active Directory. Sites are used in Active directory to determine the best path for replication traffic and for many services that you will implement in your domains.  Services include Microsoft Exchange server, AD Rights Management Services, and DFS. 

When building your sites you want to create them in such a way so that Active Directory can determine the best path for replication.  In our example, we will create three sites.  There will be one central office providing replication to both sites and a second site link for replication traffic in case the main site is unavailable.

Because the central office has the best connection to the internet and WAN links, it will have the lowest cost for replication whereas the branch sites have a slower WAN link that we do not want the primary replication traffic to cross unless there is an issue with the central office.

Creating new sites in Active Directory Sites and Services

•  First, launch Active Directory Sites and Services from the Tools menu in Server Manager

• This will bring up the window above

• Right-Click the Sites folder and select New Site…

• New Object – Site: Fill in the name of the new site and select the DEFAULTIPSITELINK for inter-site transport. Click OK

• The above informational window will appear stating that you will need to move DCs into the site, add subnets for the site, and ensure site links exist before the site is fully functional.

• After creating the ArizonaSite and the TexasSite I renamed the Default-First-Site to TexasSite since this will be our central office.  After completing the site creation, your Active Directory Sites and Services will look similar to the window above.

Assigning DCs to a Site in Active Directory Sites and Services

• Within Active Directory Sites and Services expand the Default-First-Site-Name (TexasSite) and expand the Servers folder.

• Within the folder, you will see all of the Domain Controllers in the domain that are assigned to this site.

• Right-click the AZ-DC1 object and select Move from the menu to launch the Move Server wizard.

• Select the ArizonaSite for AZ-DC1 and click OK

• I repeated the above tasks for the FloridaSite and FL-DC1 to show that we now have one DC in each site.

This concludes How to Create Active Directory Sites in Active Directory Sites and Services.

Create and Assign Subnets to Each Site in Active Directory Sites and Services

I hope this was helpful and informative to you and I would appreciate any feedback you may have.

73NWPGEGNJCV