Active Directory Site

The Active Directory (AD) site is a grouping of IP subnets.

• These subnets are well connected to each other
• They usually belong to the same building, campus, or datacenter
• The network links between them are high-speed and high-bandwidth

It is important to understand that an AD site is a logical concept, not a physical location.

Example

In the figure shown:

1. There are three AD sites: Site-P1-J, Site-P3-K, and Site-P6-H
   • Each site is aligning with a city
2. Inside each city, there are one or more datacenters (for example, Datacenter East, Datacenter West)
   • A datacenter is a physical building
   • Each datacenter hosts one or more Domain Controllers (DCs), such as DC1, DC2, and so on

Note: Each site can contain DCs from one or more domains.

Recommended articles by the author

• Active Directory

References

• [ClLo09] S. Clines and M. Loughry, Active Directory For Dummies. Wiley, 2009. [Online]. Available: https://books.google.bg/books?id=uQAO8YBheX4C
• [DRAL13] B. Desmond, J. Richards, R. Allen, and A. G. Lowe-Norris, Active Directory: Designing, Deploying, and Running Active Directory. O’Reilly Media, 2013. [Online]. Available: https://books.google.de/books?id=n3Qcoa_sMroC