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JWW-CSISD
Copper Contributor
Nov 30, 2021

Active Directory Domain Controller Login Load Balancing

We have 23 Server 2019 Domain Controllers: 3 at our Admin/Central Office location, one at each of our 19 school campuses, and one at our transportation/purchasing complex. Each campus/location has its own /14 subnet IP scheme, but they are all on the same VLAN, and there is only one AD site. From what I've been able to read, I'd expect the domain controller on each subnet to be prioritized as the login DC for workstations on that subnet, resulting in higher login totals at the more populated sites (Central Office, and 2 of the high schools), but that's not at all what I'm seeing.

 

Instead, about 25% of login traffic is going to the PDC Emulator at Central Office, with another 5% and 8% directed to the other two Central Office DCs. Meanwhile the other campuses are fairly evenly spread from 3-4% of the remaining logins each... with the smallest high school handling more logins than the other two, despite having 5% of the user count compared to the other two.

 

Anyone have an explanation for this?

 

ServerLogin CountUser Counts per campus
PDCEmu (Central Office)39161125
AdminDC02 (Central Office)13391125
AdminDC01 (Central Office)9101125
InterDC01618641
ElemDC01597734
ElemDC02555551
HighDC03552123
MidDC03552976
ElemDC03543617
InterDC02538884
ElemDC04528624
HighDC015252474
ElemDC05524624
ElemDC06521620
TranspDC516241
ElemDC07514721
ElemDC08514734
ElemDC09501751
HighDC025002393
ElemDC10492729
MidDC01488842
MidDC02488782
InterDC03480916

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