what is the ratio for DCs to PCs

[timbo343]

Hey

 

Does anyone know what the recommended ratio for DCs to PCs is on a Windows 2003 network??

 

Thanks

 

Tim

[ChrisH]

Theres some kind of scaling tool on the microsoft site somewhere but as with everything you have to know how to 'interpret' the results into a real world scenario.

Other details are needed though eg how poweful are the servers etc...

[Geoff]

Also it depends on your network topology and performance.

[ICTNUT]

We have around 600 PC's and 120 Laptops with around 60 users on ThinClient and we have only 2 DC's for the lot.

 

They hardly break a sweat although they are Dual Xeon with 2Gb Ram so that helps abit

[timbo343]

well just wanted to know as we are running nearly 382 machines and 3 DCs.

[GrumbleDook]

2 DCs with 700+ workstations and laptops and 12 other servers.

 

Print, file, proxy/filter, applications, web are all done on different machines though ...

 

The DCs do run A/V and a few small bits but they are not overly loaded.

[kingswood]

Microsoft tell you on their courses that you need at least one GC Server per site. I would say at least two. One way of finding out whether your servers are crunching some serious numbers and need another GC is to look at the LSASS process and if it's maxing out, either get yourself some RAM or spread the load.

 

I have about 600 systems with two GC servers and two that don't act as a global catalog. Works fine.