When you add sites and site links to your forest, you might create a condition in which the same site is added to two site links. You also might create a condition in which a site link does not contain all the sites for which replication is required over the site link. You can use the Active Directory Sites and Services snap-in to add sites to site links and to remove sites from site links.

Membership in the Enterprise Admins group in the forest or the Domain Admins group in the forest root domain, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477.

To add a site to or remove a site from a site link
  1. Open Active Directory Sites and Services. To open Active Directory Sites and Services, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Sites and Services.

  2. In the console tree, click the intersite transport folder that contains the site link in which you are adding or removing a site.

    Where?

    • Active Directory Sites and Services\Sites\Inter-Site Transports\IP or SMTP

  3. In the details pane, right-click the site link in which you want to add or remove a site, and then click Properties.

  4. In the appropriate list, click the site that you want to add to or remove from this site link, and then click Add or Remove, respectively.

Important

Use the IP intersite transport unless your network has remote sites where network connectivity is intermittent or end-to-end IP connectivity is not available. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) replication has restrictions that do not apply to IP replication. For more information about using the SMTP transport, see Understanding Replication Between Sites.

Additional considerations

  • To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Enterprise Admins group in the forest or the Domain Admins group in the forest root domain, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority. As a security best practice, use Run as administrator to perform this procedure. Log on with your lowest-level user account and use administrative credentials when you manage Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).

Additional references