Multi-homed domain controller

[matt11601]

This post is just for my general knowledge, but I'm trying to figure out why people multi-home their domain controller. I always thought that it'll cause problems with your DNS entries and subsequently clients connecting to the network. But then again, Microsoft provided registry tweaks to get around this problem. So my question is, why do it anyway? Is there a situation when multi-homing a domain controller is necessary?

Also, when do people multi-home anyway? Regardless if the machine is a domain controller or not, when do people multi-home (besides using ISA server)?

Thanks in advance for helping me out.

-matt

[+BudMan MVC]

The only legit reason off the top to have multiple interfaces on a machine would be if that machine was acting as a gateway from one of the networks, or routing between the networks..

I would say it would be rare that people would ever do that on a DC.. Unless of course your talking say a SBS machine - where its an everything machine for soho setup..

Which tweaks are you talking about.. But yes having multiple interfaces on a machine can be a pain for name resolution, etc.. Normally anyone that has some idea to what they were doing would avoid having multiple interfaces on a machine, unless routing between the different interfaces is what the machine is designed to do - but sure you always can run into there being no cost effective way to accomplish whatever task they are looking to do.. So you take shortcuts, etc.

[Express]

Regarding why people multi-home,

I used to have some non-critical databases to homed both the Live Site network and the corporate network. Make it easy to bring db backups from the Live network to the corp network.

The DBs are no longer dual-homed because of change in security policy.

Now I have some dual homed machines which allow me to use remote desktop to the live servers.

I first remote to the dual-homed machine and then remote again to the live site.

[matt11601]

I see now. Oh yea, Microsoft has some article which explains what to do to avoid the DNS problems with multi-homing. So basically they offer ways around some of the problems you experience with multi-homing which is why I was getting confused because I thought it was unnecessary to begin with.