Primary Domain Controller Hard Disk Requirement

[Vortex566]

We are looking to move to Server 2008 over the summer, but are unsure about the amount of disk space we would need. The sever would be purely a PDC and nothing else. We are looking to use XenServer and just wanted to get a feel for the hard disk requirements.

[karlr]

Hi,

 

Will server literally be just A PDC Emulator; no Global Cat and such?). Also, are you looking to run the server under Xen right now, are you going to migrate the physical server over to virtual later in the day, or are you looking to host virtual machines on this box (never used Xen, so not sure if it depends/runs on a full Windows/Unix host, sorry).

 

In our environment we currently use 146gb 10K SAS drives. We set them up in a configuration of: 2x drives in RAID 1 for OS drive (C drive); n drives in RAID 5 for our data drive (E drive), n being a minimum of 3, and scaling up depending on what the server is used for. However, strictly speaking I'd give a 2008 box a minimum of 64gb to play with. Our OS drives tend to use around 25gb.

 

Best wishes,

 

Karl

St Clement's High School

Edited June 10, 2010 by karlr

[zag]

Our 2008 R2 Domain controller takes up about 11gb of space in total.

 

I'd probably give it 40gb hard disk on a virtual machine just to be sure.

[danrhodes]

Does lead us back to the thread of to go with Fixed or Dynamic disks for virtual servers?

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/thin-client-virtual-machines/56731-multiple-virtual-discs.html

[DMcCoy]

Fixed is no issue with newer versions of windows. I simply increase the size of the vmware disk image. Then I can expand the partition in 2008 R2 to use the new space. For 2003 boxes I temporarily attach the vmdk file to an 08 VM to expand the partition.

 

Not that it couldn't be done before, but now it's just a few clicks in disk management.