AD Sites and Services question

hi everyone. im in the middle of planning an enormous migration from 2000
ad/exchange to 2003 using Quest migration manager. i need the AD to be as
"clean" as possible before the pilot begins so heres my question:

our north american headquarters are in NY and we have 400+ branch offices
scattered throughout the country. however we only have one "site" as far as
AD is concerned. none of the branch offices have a DC onsite; they all
authenticate across different wan links. when i run AD sites and services,
under the "subnets" tree, we have several hundred subnets! (it looks like
one for each branch office) but i was under the impression that you only
needed subnets if you had multiple sites. in that scenario you would have a
DC in each site and an associated subnet. so my question is: could these
subnets be doing anything else? is it safe to delete them? maybe my
predecessor planned on eventually having DC's in each location and
ultimately configuring each location as an AD site so he was just planning
for the future? or did he not know what he was doing and wasted a lot of
time?

someone please advise.

thank you!

those subnets do no harm ...leave them there.


--
Andrei Ungureanu
www.eventid.net
Free Windows event logs reports
http://www.altairtech.ca/evlog/


<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:bY3Oe.7508$(E-Mail Removed)...
> hi everyone. im in the middle of planning an enormous migration from 2000
> ad/exchange to 2003 using Quest migration manager. i need the AD to be as
> "clean" as possible before the pilot begins so heres my question:
>
> our north american headquarters are in NY and we have 400+ branch offices
> scattered throughout the country. however we only have one "site" as far
> as AD is concerned. none of the branch offices have a DC onsite; they all
> authenticate across different wan links. when i run AD sites and services,
> under the "subnets" tree, we have several hundred subnets! (it looks like
> one for each branch office) but i was under the impression that you only
> needed subnets if you had multiple sites. in that scenario you would have
> a DC in each site and an associated subnet. so my question is: could these
> subnets be doing anything else? is it safe to delete them? maybe my
> predecessor planned on eventually having DC's in each location and
> ultimately configuring each location as an AD site so he was just planning
> for the future? or did he not know what he was doing and wasted a lot of
> time?
>
> someone please advise.
>
> thank you!
>
>

They could. A subnet is associated with a site to facilitate replication.
Since you don't have DC's in the sites, you don't have replication. Question
is, what if you wanted to set GPO's at the site level? Today its one site
and not an issue, but tomorrow may bring a different answer.

I agree with Andrei. It doesn't hurt to leave them, so leave them just in
case.


--
Hope it helps

dw

_______________________________
Don Wilwol
donwilwol(DELETE)@yahoo.com
http://spaces.msn.com/members/wilwol/


<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:bY3Oe.7508$(E-Mail Removed)...
> hi everyone. im in the middle of planning an enormous migration from 2000
> ad/exchange to 2003 using Quest migration manager. i need the AD to be as
> "clean" as possible before the pilot begins so heres my question:
>
> our north american headquarters are in NY and we have 400+ branch offices
> scattered throughout the country. however we only have one "site" as far
> as AD is concerned. none of the branch offices have a DC onsite; they all
> authenticate across different wan links. when i run AD sites and services,
> under the "subnets" tree, we have several hundred subnets! (it looks like
> one for each branch office) but i was under the impression that you only
> needed subnets if you had multiple sites. in that scenario you would have
> a DC in each site and an associated subnet. so my question is: could these
> subnets be doing anything else? is it safe to delete them? maybe my
> predecessor planned on eventually having DC's in each location and
> ultimately configuring each location as an AD site so he was just planning
> for the future? or did he not know what he was doing and wasted a lot of
> time?
>
> someone please advise.
>
> thank you!
>
>

Might want to look a little deeper to decide if the time was wasted. As a
consultant I've set them up to help remind me of where user workstation
addresses are located and help me zero in on issues more quickly. But
functionally, the prior admin may have set them up to help users locate
nearby printers.

Check to see if the "Location" field of the subnets have been populated and
published printers have corresponding values before you delete them and
quite possibly 'rile' a whole bunch of remote users. If so, the prior admin
may have setup the printer location tracking function in group policy.

I'd probably export a list of the subnets and their properties before I
arbitrarily deleted them.
--
/kj
"Don Wilwol" <donWilwol@(EMAIL)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> They could. A subnet is associated with a site to facilitate replication.
> Since you don't have DC's in the sites, you don't have replication.
> Question is, what if you wanted to set GPO's at the site level? Today its
> one site and not an issue, but tomorrow may bring a different answer.
>
> I agree with Andrei. It doesn't hurt to leave them, so leave them just in
> case.
>
>
> --
> Hope it helps
>
> dw
>
> _______________________________
> Don Wilwol
> donwilwol(DELETE)@yahoo.com
> http://spaces.msn.com/members/wilwol/
>
>
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:bY3Oe.7508$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> hi everyone. im in the middle of planning an enormous migration from 2000
>> ad/exchange to 2003 using Quest migration manager. i need the AD to be as
>> "clean" as possible before the pilot begins so heres my question:
>>
>> our north american headquarters are in NY and we have 400+ branch offices
>> scattered throughout the country. however we only have one "site" as far
>> as AD is concerned. none of the branch offices have a DC onsite; they all
>> authenticate across different wan links. when i run AD sites and
>> services, under the "subnets" tree, we have several hundred subnets! (it
>> looks like one for each branch office) but i was under the impression
>> that you only needed subnets if you had multiple sites. in that scenario
>> you would have a DC in each site and an associated subnet. so my question
>> is: could these subnets be doing anything else? is it safe to delete
>> them? maybe my predecessor planned on eventually having DC's in each
>> location and ultimately configuring each location as an AD site so he was
>> just planning for the future? or did he not know what he was doing and
>> wasted a lot of time?
>>
>> someone please advise.
>>
>> thank you!
>>
>>
>
>