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Managing Branch Offices with Windows Server 2008 R2

For organizations that have expanded their office boundaries to include geographically dispersed branch office locations, the administration of distributed infrastructure resources and the optimization of communications channels can present serious challenges. With Windows Server 2008 R2, you can maintain the performance, availability, and productivity benefits of local branch office services while overcoming several of the challenges associated with managing a mixed branch and global office environment.

Windows Server 2008 R2 in a mixed branch and global office environment

Service Placement

Service placement determines where services are to be hosted. Services can be launched from a centralize datacenter, distributed at each branch office, or part of a hybridized approach that centralizes some of the services while hosting others at each branch location.

Each organization has different priorities. These can dictate which set of requirements has the most impact on branch infrastructure design and which service delivery model server as an idea of the overall branch resource delivery strategies. There is no single solution that works for all organizations or even all branch office. Therefore Microsoft offers an array of products and features that give organizations the flexibility to choose the approach that is best for their requirements.

  • Centralized Services

    In this scenario, all services to the branch office are located at the central site or datacenter. This approach represents one end of the branch service delivery spectrum where services are most consolidated and investments in branch infrastructure are lowest. WAN utilization and Dependency are quite high since the bulk of the services are centralized, and latency tolerance will be low due to the reliance of the WAN infrastructure for resource and application access.

  • Hybrid Services

    In this scenario, all services are accelerated by caching mechanism or local copies from the centralize site. Generally this approach is used to address services that are difficult to centralize while still lowering branch infrastructure investment through the partial centralization of services. This scenario provides medium WAN utilization and dependency, while lowering the latency tolerance to moderate.

  • Distributed Services

    In this scenario, all services are hosted at branch locations and service delivery has little or no dependencies upon a centralized location or remote datacenter. This approach represents another end of the branch service delivery spectrum were services are most distributed between branch locations and a central office or Datacenter. Although branch infrastructure investments are higher, there is more resiliency and less relicense on the WAN connectivity.

Service Provisioning

Service Provisioning approaches determine how services are delivered. Server methods of service delivery are available for branch offices. These methods range from the purely centralized client-based approach, through to hybridized appliance-based service delivery approach. Many organizations may also take advantage of multiple virtual host servers for a distributed service delivery approach.

Many factors can affect an organizations decision on which method of service delivery us best for their branch office. Each branch office can present unique challenges that necessitate the use of different approached for each location.

There are three basic methods of service delivery available to branch offices: Server-Less, Appliance-Based and Server-based.

  • Server-Less approaches utilize the service delivery methods that are in place at the centralized datacenter or hub location.

  • Appliance-Based approaches deliver services from specialized hardware devices, or appliances that are typically preconfigured and lack the flexibility of a general purpose server. However appliances can provide cost savings through reduced infrastructure and administrative overhead while providing better performance for branch users than a server-less approach would.

  • Server-Based approaches utilize general-purpose servers located at the branch office to deliver services to branch office clients. This approach is more flexible than server-less or appliance-based approaches because general-purpose servers can be provisioned to supply various services and application to the branch office users while reducing reliance and load on WAN connections.

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What about Single Operating Systems vs. Virtualization?

By utilizing virtualization technologies at a branch office location, an organization can provide a wide variety of services and redundancy at a reduced deployment. This means that deployment, infrastructure, and management costs are lower than a delivery of the same number of services that utilizes the traditional approach of a single operating system per server.

However, some organizations may not be able to justify investments in newer servers if they already have existing servers at branch locations that do not meet the hardware requirements necessary for hosting multiple virtualization server instances. There are other considerations surrounding resiliency, scalability, performance and unsupported applications that may require a single operating system per server approach.

It is also possible to utilize a hybridized approach to operating system considerations by placing virtualized servers and single operating systems serves at the location. In this way, they can support applications and services that require a dedicated server while saving costs by consolidating several server roles onto fewer virtualized server hosts. The possibilities available give organizations the flexibility to choose the optimum approach for each branch office’s requirements and capabilities.

Learn more about Branch Office Solutions and Deployments at the Branch Office Tech Center.

 

How does Windows Server 2008 R2 Help?

Improved performance for branch offices

Driven by challenges of reducing cost and complexity of Branch IT, organizations are seeking to centralize applications. However, as organizations centralize applications the dependency on the availability and quality of the WAN link increases. A direct result of centralization is the increased utilization of the WAN link, and the degradation of application performance. Recent studies have shown that despite the reduction of costs associated with WAN links, WAN costs are still a major component of enterprises’ operational expenses.

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Improved security for branch offices

Windows Server 2008 R2 introduced the read-only domain controller feature, which allows a read-only copy of Active Directory to be placed in less secure environments such as branch offices. Windows Server 2008 R2 introduces support for read-only copies of information stored in Distributed File System (DFS) replicas. Read-only DFS replicas helps protect your digital assets by allowing branch offices read-only access to information that you replicate to the offices by using DFS. Because the information is read-only, users are unable to modify the content stored in read-only DFS replicated content and thereby protects data in DFS replicas from accidental deletion at branch office locations.

Improved virtualized desktop integration

Windows 7 introduces the RemoteApp and Desktop (RAD) feeds feature, which helps integrate desktops and applications virtualized by using Remote Desktop Services with the Windows 7 user interface. This integration makes the user experience for running virtualized applications or desktops the same as running the applications locally.

Higher fault tolerance for connectivity between sites

One of the most common scenarios facing organizations today is connectivity between sites and locations. Many organizations connect their sites and locations by using VPN tunnels over public networks, such as the Internet. One problem with existing VPN solutions is that they are not resilient to connection failures or device outages. When any outage occurs, the VPN tunnel is terminated and the VPN tunnel must be reestablished, resulting in momentary connectivity outages. The Agile VPN feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 allows a VPN to have multiple network paths between points in the VPN tunnel. In the event of a failure, Agile VPN automatically uses another network path to maintain the existing VPN tunnel, with no interruption of connectivity.