Questions about your DC

[Kyle]

One of our first DC's is just over 3 years old and is doing ok. One problem we have is that it also hold all of the students home directories. Due to media studies taking off in year 11 this year we have seen a sharp rise in data storage. We are thinking of buying a new server this year but going for rackmount instead of pedastal. But we would also like to get a NAS box to hold all the home areas.

 

W ehave no need to introduce quotas as we can easily afford both options mentioned above.

 

How do you currently do it and what wouuld you recommend.

[john]

I use a normal server running Server 2003, I have SCSI Hard Drives in it, setup in a RAID 5 array, I use 75GB ones (3 of them) and away we go, just point the home directory to the new path and away you go. A good way to move them is to back them up to a file using NTbackup and then restore them from that file on the new server, then permissions stay the same as present etc and should be hunkers. Hope that all makes sense!

[ChrisH]

What ever server you put them on you want RAID 5 with volume shadow copy enabled on the volume. To migrate the data I usually use robocopy which copies everything over and preserves the permissions. I also use robocopy as part of my backup routine but thats another story

I have my user areas on a seperate file server but have like you in the past had them on a DC.

[Gatt]

I have 2 DC's - after a major crash back in february

Now have a NULL Root DC, along with a Pupil DC (child of Root) which holds all the pupil U&C accounts. File Server is joined to Pupil Domain and holds everything from their home folders, shared area, software distribution points, etc

 

Trying to wrangle money out of the school to get a new server to move the home shares onto as its bottlenecking the fileserver with so much data throughput (1200+ kids all accessing the PSA & home drives & me accessing the software share.). I use NTBackup for the PSA & Home folders - gonna clear them all out then look at a reasonable Quota allocation for the kids - taking into account Media studies & GCSE - for next year

 

Want to use SQL Server, but servers are that loaded that im sticking with MSDE for the moment - ands thats just for PMP. Our LSB has a sep PC running SQL Server for Dyslexia screener though.

[Ric_]

@Kyle: I would lean towards a SAN rather than NAS as it is more flexible and gives you the ability to upgrade your storage more easily in the future.

 

You can also use your SAN drive space for hosting SQL databases and the like - something that a NAS won't do!