We have two offices with a VPN in between, AD feels slow at the second office.
Without Sites and Services, clients think all DCs are equally close and pick one at random, often across the tunnel. Sites with subnets fix this.
Try this first
- 1Open AD Sites and Services. Create a site per physical location and attach the proper subnets (both client and server subnets) to each.
- 2Move DCs to their home site via 'Move' on the server object under the old site.
- 3Configure the site link: cost, replication interval (default 180 minutes, shorter is fine), schedule (24/7 in most SMB cases).
- 4Test on a client at site 2: nltest /dsgetdc:DOMAIN should return a DC from the local site, not headquarters.
- 5Document which subnet belongs to which site. A new subnet without mapping gets treated as 'Default-First-Site', and the slowness comes back.
When to bring us in
With more than two offices or a DR site, consider a Read-Only Domain Controller at less critical locations, and explicitly document your site-link bridging choices.
See also
- One DC or two DCs for an SMB office?Two is almost always the right answer; one DC is a single point of failure for logon, DNS and GPOs.
- Should I split FSMO roles across two DCs?For a small domain all on one DC is fine; with two DCs splitting is tidier but not required.
- How do I know my AD replication is healthy?Replication errors creep in silently; they only surface when logins or GPOs misbehave.
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