Windows 2008 Server Domain Forests Question

[vidda]

Hey guys,

We are looking at shifting the domain controller from Samba to Windows 2008 R2 when it comes out. The main reasoning behind this is that although our current Samba DC works a treat, Windows 7 is shaping up to be the next OS for business use. From the minor testing we've found that it doesn't really work with our Samba domain.

Now for the question...

We have multiple sites situated around the UK with a centralised IT office. What we would like is that every site has it's own read only DC. This is obviously possible.

Now, is it possible for every site to have it's own domain under the PDC's forest like so:

site1 = site1.company.com
site2 = site2.company.com

Where the DC for each site is the PDC (the one which owns company.com) and each site has their own read only DC?

Hopefully I've made it clear but I can draw a diagram if anyone is having trouble understanding.

Thanks for the help.

 

[vidda]

Is there any reason why you've not considered a single domain?

If people move from site to site (which is regular) for visiting purposes, sales people etc - they only need access to the internet and the files on their local PC. If we have a single domain, wouldn't their files be uploaded to a server on a site which they don't belong too? This is something we don't want as each site can be seen as a seperate company.

Ideally we want the situation of which we can manage the AD (IT Dept) from a central location and have read only domain controllers at each site with password replication and profile storage area. Users can only store their profile to the site they belong too.

Surely DirectAccess (at the moment we use OpenVPN) would become a viable solution in the future, if not right away, and therefore you need a seperate domain per site which is fully qualified that points to their DC? (I'm not clued up on this, it's just an assumption... a lot of the information is very vague especially from the Microsoft website).

If someone could spare some moments and provide some information on how this would be possible that would be great.