Activity 4.1: Defining Domains

In this activity you will read about two organizations that are planning their Active Directory infrastructure. Your task is to analyze each organization's environment to define the domains needed in an Active Directory infrastructure.

Scenario 1: Friendship Vineyards

You are an infrastructure planner on the Active Directory infrastructure design team for Friendship Vineyards, a winery that operates from four locations in South Africa. The business and technical environment analysis documents have already been compiled and copies have been distributed to everyone on the team. You are now in the process of defining the domains for the organization.

Friendship Vineyards is a centralized organization, with IT administration handled from its Cape Town headquarters. Each of the four locations also has a small IT staff to handle basic support tasks. There is one special requirement—that desktops for the distribution personnel at all four locations be restricted to distribution software only. Although Friendship Vineyards is currently running Windows NT 4, its management has decided not to carry the company's current domain structure into the new Windows 2000 environment. A check of the existing DNS namespace reveals that Friendship Vineyards has a Web site, which operates using the DNS name f-100times.com. Your design team has diagrammed the network architecture shown in Figure 4.3.

Figure 4.3 Network architecture for Friendship Vineyards

1. On the network architecture diagram, use a triangle to indicate the location of the domain(s) you would define for Friendship Vineyards.
   
   
   
2. Explain your reasoning for defining the domain(s).
   
   
   

Answers

Scenario 2: Awesome Computers

You are an infrastructure planner on the Active Directory infrastructure design team for Awesome Computers, a global multibillion-dollar computer manufacturer with more than 65,000 users and computers at more than 30 locations. The company headquarters is located in Atlanta. Six regional offices representing Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America link to headquarters, and 26 (total) sales offices link to the regional offices. The business and technical environment analysis documents have already been compiled and copies have been distributed to everyone on the team. Your task is to define the domains for the organization.

Each regional office of Awesome Computers runs independently while still a part of the global company. Headquarters oversees each of the regional offices by selecting the administrators and determining the network structure. Each sales office is administered by the regional office to which it connects.

While reading through the business and technical environment analysis documents, you note the following:

• Each of the regional offices requires a separate password and account lockout policy.
• The sales offices in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland each require localized language settings.
• The Brazilian sales office has a vital accounting database running on Windows NT 4 that must be confined to its own domain. This office also regularly accesses engineering resources at the European location.
• The sales office in Thailand is running several critical Asian distribution applications that will not run under Windows 2000.
• Awesome Computers will soon be acquiring Bits, Bytes & Chips, Inc., a maker of storage media. Bits, Bytes & Chips, Inc., receives 75% of its revenues from sales over the Internet at its Web site, b-100times.com. Awesome Computers will leave the structure of Bits, Bytes & Chips, Inc., undisturbed after the acquisition is complete. However, Bits, Bytes & Chips, Inc., will be part of the same forest as Awesome Computers.
• A check of the existing DNS namespace reveals that Awesome Computers has a Web site, which operates using the DNS name a-100times.com.

Your design team has diagrammed the network architecture shown in Figure 4.4.

Figure 4.4 Network architecture for Awesome Computers

1. On the network architecture diagram, use a triangle to indicate the location of the domain(s) you would define for Awesome Computers.
   
   
   
2. Explain your reasoning for defining the domain(s).
   
   
   

Answers