Microsoft Azure AZ-800 — Section 4: Configure and manage multi-site, multi-domain, and multi-forest environments Part 3

34. Configure and manage AD DS sites

So now that we have an understanding of the concept of Active Directory sites and subnets and site links, I want to show you how we can configure it.

So essentially what we’re going to do is we’re going to configure what we created this little diagram, this little hypothetical scenario. We’re going to learn how we would create this in our Active Directory environment, OK, even though we don’t really have all these locations and we don’t have all these directories, we can still go through the motions of learning how to do this, OK? So, I’m going to jump over to my domain controller, which is NYC DC one. I’m going to open up server manager. You can click on Server Manager. I’m going to go into server manager. From there, I’m going to click tools and I’m going to use Active Directory sites and services for this.

So that’s going to be the tool that I use. All right for configuring my sites, my site links subnets.

Now we get into that, there’s a folder called sites. And from there, you’re going to notice that I have a single site.

OK.

Now, this little site is a little symbol of a building, and you can tell that Microsoft is called it the default first site name.

OK, now I’m going to work in the real world. I would probably rename that, but just for the sake of not wanting to break anything in Active Directory because we don’t really have all these real locations. We’re just going to leave that alone.

OK, we’re going to create three new sites.

OK, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to right click the sites folder. I’m going to say new site, click on new site. From there, I’m going to call first site. I’m going to call it New York. All right. And I’m going to select the default IP site link, we’re going to change all that a bit. This the connection that’s supposed to represent a connection between the site and other sites, but we’re going to change that.

So, we’re just going to select that for now. We’re going to click OK. And just like that, we’ve got our first site.

OK, we’re going to right click again. New site and I’m going to create one called Dallas.

OK. Same thing. Default IP site link. And then I’m going to create a site called Birmingham.

OK, represent site link. There we go.

So, we got our three sites. We can ignore this default first site name right now. We got our three sites. Keep in mind, if you did want to rename a site, you can do that very easily, but I’m not going to rename the site.

OK? So the next thing would be to move our domain controllers to the correct site in order to make tools right now are located in this default first site name. They expand their expand servers. You’ll see that I have my to make jaws here, OK, including a Radzi test that I didn’t actually set up.

So you can ignore that. But from there I can move my domain shorts to the correct site.

So, if I wanted to move these to New York, I could expand New York, expand servers. And then I can just drag and drop that in there.

OK, now I don’t actually want to do this, so, I’m not going to do it. I could, but I want to leave these alone because right now my NY, CDK1 and Server one are really in the same site default first item in the replicating. And remember, I don’t really have these sites. If I physically had them, then it would be fine to do that as long as these servers were physically in those locations. But that would be the next step. You would move your domain controllers into the proper, into the proper thing.

So at that point, Active Directory would now know about the three ovals that you have, and it would now know which domain controllers go in each of the sites.

OK.

So the next step would be to create our site links, So, we’re going to go ahead and create this Dallas. Five Emby -in New York site link All right. That’s going to be our first site link that we’re going to we’re going to create going to represent it in our Active Directory environment.

OK.

OK.

So, we’ll jump back over to RDC and you’re going to go to Inter site transports to do that and you’ll notice there’s two different options. You have IP and SMTP.

So this SMTP option is not really ever used anymore. It’s just a little the history there. Originally, what Active Directory was created? It was the Microsoft Exchange five five team, the team that built Exchange five five in the 1990s that created Active Directory. And so there was a lot of email related services that did replication and all that.

So you could actually use the SMTP protocol simple military for protocol two to do replication, but it was really only meant for like dial up connections and things like that.

So, it’s not something that we really use anymore. It’s still there, but it’s not something you use. You always want to use IP for replication and you’ll notice there is a link called the default IP site like, I’m going to leave that link alone and I’m going to create a site link based on my diagram.

OK, so, I’m going to right click and just say new site link. And then from there, the very first site link you’ll notice in my diagram was the word Dallas -five, Emby Dash, New York. And then I’m going to add the sites that this going to connect. It’s going to connect Dallas and it’s going to connect New York.

OK, so there are the two sites that is connecting.

So at that point? It Neil knows about this link right here. All right.

So let’s go back over here. We’re going to right click the inner IP again. New site link in the second link is called New York Dash. To me, -berm. That’s what I called it.

So at Birmingham and New York and you’ve now you’ve now got that second link created, which is this link right here? And then we’re going to create this third link to represent kind of a fail over between Dallas and Birmingham if one of these other lines goes down.

So that was burned. Five 12. Dash, Dallas So, we’ll jump back over here. Right click new site link. And this one’s called Burma -five, K -Dallas. And we’re going to add these two right here.

So Birmingham and then Dallas? OK. At that point, we’ve now officially got the third and final site link set up, so, it now knows about this connection right here. All right.

OK.

So jump back over here, the next thing that we need to do is adjust the cost and there’s the replication in the room as well.

So, if you look, we want replication to occur in the direction that we want it to happen. And so, we’ve got a 25 cost on this link. We’ve got a 100 cost on that link and then a 400 calls there.

So, we’re just going to adjust the cost, OK? So, we’ll jump back over here and we’re going to double click on the Dallas one first Dallas five and be New York and just double click and we’re going to change the cost to 25. From there, we’re going to click OK, now the next link is the New York -to embed Ashburn. We can leave that in the way it is because we had said it was going to be 100 and then we’re going to do the Birmingham -five 12, -Dallas. We’re going to double click on that and we’re going to change that one to 400.

So now replication would occur in the direction that we want it to.

Now the next thing I want to show you here. Is that we have. We also can affect the replication interval, so, If we look at like Dallas -five and be in New York, it’s going to replicate every 180 minutes.

So that’s where I was getting the three hour time interval from I was talking about. But not only that, there’s a schedule you can change as well, which is kind of interesting.

So, if you want, you can make it where replication cannot occur during certain hours, maybe peak business hours if you want, you know.

So, for example, I could say, well, you know, on Monday, things are really busy between nine and 2:00 p.m.

So, we’ll just say, don’t allow replication. And we could do that all week long if we wanted to. We could stop the replication from occurring during those hours. Just wipe that out if you want.

OK, I’m not going to actually do that. I just wanted to show you that I’m actually doing nine to three instead of two, but nine to three. I’m going to allow it. But I just wanted to show you that you could do that. You can tweak the replication schedule.

So not only do you have a replication interval, which is every three hours, every 80 minutes, you’ve also got a schedule where you can prevent replication from occurring. All right.

Now the last thing that’s a very important is that we can figure the subnets.

So you remember that in order for VNS to be able to point your devices to the closest locations, you also have to make sure the DNC knows about the subnet.

So, if we actually go and look at the diagram I made, you’re going to notice that I said, OK, the New York has this subnet in the Dallas has this subnet in Birmingham has at some other way, you could have more than one subnet in each site.

So you can, you know, associate the other ones. But remember that a subnet can only be associated to one site.

So you can’t have like a 180 168 one in Dallas as well. This very important that your whole network has a unique IP strategy that it’s using.

OK. All right, so now. We’re going to jump back over to the D.C. we’re going to click on where it says subnets, we’re going to right click that and we’re going to say new subnet.

OK, and then I’m just going to put in what I had entered in. This going to be an IP version four, although it does support IP version six. I’m going to go 192.168.1.1 zero slash 24.

OK, and then we’re going to select that was New York.

So, we’ll select New York, and then we’re going to right click again. We’re going to say new subnet. And then this was going to be 181, 68, 2.0 slash 24, and that was going to be Dallas.

OK. And then finally, we’re into this one more time and that’s going to be 190 to 168. 3.0 slash 24 and that is going to be Birmingham, OK? And just like that, we’ve now officially got our subnets at it.

OK. All right.

So as you can see, that is how I can configure my sites, my subnet, all that fun stuff.

OK.

OK. And the only other thing I wanted to show you, if I right click this IP folder here under interstate transport. I can disable cycling bridging.

So all right now, all bridge heads would talk to all other bridge heads. But if I disable that, if I wanted to disable that, I could. And then at that point, if I wanted to create an individual cycling bridge and just group certain sites together in a in a bridge kind of like I showed you here, I could do that if I wanted to. All right.

So. I could right click it and I could do a new site link brief, so, I just want to show you how I could do that. I’m not actually going to disable Cycling Bridge. In fact, most people, they’re going to recommend that you keep it enabled.

OK. All right. The last thing I’ll show you is I want to show you how Fast Dance normally learns about this information.

So, if I’m hearing him on my to make, which is also my DNS server, if I go to ols and I click DNS. We go under in D.C. one for two look up zones, there’s exam lab practice, .com my domain, I expand that out. There’s a folder called sites and look at there, it’s already got the site information. All right.

So that’s already in there.

OK, so now that I’ve done that, I’m actually going to clean this all up. I’m going to get rid of it. I just wanted to show you how you would enroll it in. We don’t really have those locations, so, we don’t want Active Directory thinking we have those locations.

So, I’m going to go ahead and just delete all of this right now just to kind of clean it up.

So, it doesn’t affect things.

OK. And this just basically taking it all back to the way that it was. All right. And that should do it, everything is back to the way it was now. All right. All right, so that gives you a decent understanding now of how we can figure our Active Directory sites, our site links and our subnets.