1

Hello!

What would you do if you have one company that’s totally functional and tasked with starting another whole company while keeping your’s running smoothly? Would you integrate or start fresh…

Backstory:

I know this is a can of worms topic - sorry.

I can’t get into too many specifics but my company is about 150 people strong. We utilize VMware, on-prem A/D, and O365. We are reviewing a company that would be a new domain and comes with another IT team and full staff. The addition wouldn’t include any networking equipment, servers, laptops, etc. Just the staff and buildings would remain.

I’ve been tasked with weighing pros/cons of integrating or starting a whole new infrastructure. I wanted to see what my friendly Spiceheads thought.

Initially I’m thinking that we keep the networks separate and harness Azure instead of on-prem A/D but this is all new stuff for me. Other thoughts was to harness VMware DR, AWS (know nothing of either), datacenters, etc.

I know I’m talking in circles - sorry my mind is exploding right now with possibilities.

3 Spice ups
2

I would likely go with a hybrid approach. Share hardware if needed, but logically segregate… give each company its own VLAN/Network/Subnet, but use the same hardware. Give each company its own domain and servers, but again, share the physical servers.

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Thanks for the reply. I should make it clear that these buildings are in other states and speed is of the essence. We aren’t ruling out running off our current infrastructure, so your recommendation is valid.

4

Since there is no equipment at the remote site, you have some flexibility depending on budget.

However, how will the new addition be merged in the workflow of the company? This is the lynchpin for what sorts of recommendations folks may provide.

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Breaking news - Looks like we are leaning heavily toward merge. So assuming it’ll be a new domain.com but nestled into our existing domain.local site in A/D simply utilizing a new OU… The new buildings would have a new AD server that syncs with our existing. Then use SonicWall VPN site to sites… This is all developing in my head as I type… This could be fun with VMware for redundancy but damn, I’ll have a huge expense moving away form the Essentials pack - so maybe move away from that idea.

No idea the numbers but lets just say 500k initial budget with 500k ongoing (equipment, staff, licensing).

6

This is a perfect opportunity to leverage Azure AD and O365.
I worked with a company recently that is in the final process of moving most of their file storage from on-prem to Sharepoint (and then connect via OneDrive from their computers in the office and also be able to access remotely).
With Azure AD, you will be able to provide AD services to both locations (states away) really easily and not have to worry about sync’ing DC information over the WAN.
This is a big project, and an exciting one! How I would approach this would be:

  1. Get Azure AD set up, migrate both locations onto a common domain with all the steps that comes along with it (file permissions for each location for on-prem servers and all that).
  2. Really assess collaboration needs and start migrating file services to O365. The company I worked with did it Dept by Dept.
  3. Don’t forget to get a good DR solution for O365 if you are using it for primary file services. Most of the products today have an O365 option or module to back up.

That is really simplified, but absolutely doable.

Would love to get updates on what you end up doing!

Thanks!

1 Spice up
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The technical and design is easy to integrate. The important question is, does the company have the funds to start fresh?

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Add my 2 cents for Azure AD. The cost (not insignificant) may well be offset by lower integration costs (VMWare upgrades, network upgrades) etc.Also, there are lots of alternatives for IAM services. Check out Okta.

But before you go much further, may I suggest you undertake an inventory of what each organization has in the way of networks and networked assets, and then an analysis of what access needs there are. Now is the time to consider a zero trust architecture, or at least a more robust network segmentation design.

1 Spice up
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All great feedback guys and much appreciated. I will push for Azure since that seems to be the future of M$ but that might be a later down the road thing (although now is the time).

Okta looks neat but looks like we’re ruling out cloud for now.