To plan your site layout, create a geographic profile that shows all the locations where your company has facilities. It may represent a small region or a large geographical area. Use a map or diagram to identify the number and types of users at each location. A visual representation helps you identify available network connections and network traffic.
To ensure compatibility with the directory service used in future version of Windows NT Server, the following additional factors should be taken into consideration:
Table 6.1
| Windows NT Server consideration | Requirement or suggestion | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent connections | The network link must be permanent. | ||
| Adequate available network bandwidth | The bandwidth threshold must be able to support the volume of data transmitted within the site. | ||
| Security |
Replicating Windows NT services must run under the same Windows NT security context so that they can authenticate each other. This includes core services such as Windows NT replication and routing, as well as other installed servers. In other words, replication services must belong to either the same Windows NT domain or to domains that trust each other. |
||
| Administration | Keep the number of sites to a minimum to ease administration tasks. | ||
| Costs | To control costs of expensive WAN links, place servers that are connected by an expensive link in separate sites. | ||
| Performance | The number of servers in each site affects site and server performance. More servers in a site will generate more network traffic throughout that site. | ||
| Directory replication |
If automatic, frequent replication between servers is needed, place them in the same site (as long as they meet the necessary conditions described above). Directory replication occurs more often within a site than it does among sites. |
||
| Organizational Issues | Group people together that work on the same servers and sites to improve overall performance of the system, reduce network traffic, and reduce resource use. |
MSMQ site boundaries should not be based on your Windows NT Server domain structure - each should be set according to the appropriate criteria. However, do not worry if the site boundaries and the domain structure happen to match.
Note With Microsoft Exchange, all servers in an organization are also grouped together into sites. In Exchange, a site is a group of servers that shares the same directory information and can communicate over high-bandwidth, permanent, and synchronous connections. If your organization uses Microsoft Exchange, and the sites defined for Exchange fall within the MSMQ site definition, use the same sites for both products.
If your enterprise has more than one site, you must establish site links and their associated costs. Site link costs are simply relative numbers used to calculate the best inter-site message route. After you determine the number of sites in your enterprise, choose the appropriate values for the site links. In most cases, this is a fairly straightforward process.
For example, if you choose to base site link costs on delay (the speed of the link), you might use the following values.
Table 6.2
| Line speed between sites | Site link value | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 Mbps | 1 | ||
| 4 to 16 Mbps | 2 | ||
| 1 to 4 Mbps | 3 | ||
| 128 Kbps | 4 | ||
| 56 Kbps | 5 |
For information on how to set and change site link costs, see the PSC installation procedure in Chapter 2, Installing MSMQ or MSMQ Explorer Help.