Multiple servers - do we need them?

[smurfomatic]

This is our current setup. Servers 1 & 3 running 2003 and Server 2 just been upgraded to 2012. All used to be physical machines, now VMs running on a 2012 host with a replica server in another building and backed up to a NAS box in yet another building:

 

Server1 - Exchange & OWA, some user profiles, staff network drive, DHCP, DNS, print server, router for one of our two ADSL lines (other runs through Smoothwall)

Server2 - Most user profiles, student network drive, DHCP, DNS, WSUS, Group Policy

Server3 - Used to be a citrix server, now solely running Blackberry Enterprise Server to keep one teacher's Blackberry connected

 

Note the lack of redundancy in the system as it currently is, no server's job replicated elsewhere except for its own replica on another machine...this was something I had complained about for a long time while they were separate physical machines, it's only since I built the replica server out of spare parts that we've had any on-the-fly backup.

 

Over the summer, we are planning to switch to using Google for emails. We are also going to have a mass clearout of the staff network drive as it hasn't been done while I've been in the job (10 years) and is full of outdated rubbish which will be archived just in case. This will mean Server3 is no longer needed and Server1 will lose most of its roles.

 

We also need to get a Smoothwall engineer out at some point so we can change the setup, running both ADSL lines through it and get load balancing running.

 

I've got to thinking, why upgrade/replace Server1 at all? Transfer the user profiles over, update their entries in AD, reinstall the printers on Server2 and then decommission it.

 

Can anyone think of a good reason to keep Server1? Storage space won't be an option, once we remove 200GB of emails and 600GB of staff network drive then there's going to be loads of room!

[Blue_Cookeh]

In your situation, once you move over to Google Apps and moved both your ADSL lines to your Smoothwall I'd be looking at running two Hyper-V servers on Windows Server 2016, both running at least 1 VM that hosts Active Directory/DNS/DHCP/user profiles.

 

This would give you the redundancy you need.

[smurfomatic]

In your situation, once you move over to Google Apps and moved both your ADSL lines to your Smoothwall I'd be looking at running two Hyper-V servers on Windows Server 2016, both running at least 1 VM that hosts Active Directory/DNS/DHCP/user profiles.

 

This would give you the redundancy you need.

 

Thanks, that's pretty much as I planned. Saves the hassle of upgrading the "old" Server1 VM and still gives us redundancy.