edutech4schools Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 I have a single server primary school that has a nice new server with all the AD rolls and off site backup and for simplicities sake its probably best to keep it this way (most primary schools are single server). The school also have another server not being used that has 2gig ram, xeon processor and 3x 75gb SCSI drives in raid 5. Any thought what I could use the other server for, keeping in mind the off site backup can only run from the main server. Thanks.
achedgy Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 Second DC & DNS, backup DHCP, script crucial files to copy to it overnight, giving you a nice bit of resilience Single server never a nice place to be...
dhicks Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 The school also have another server not being used that has 2gig ram, xeon processor and 3x 75gb SCSI drives in raid 5. Stick five 2TB SATA harddrives in it and run a bunch of VMs on it - one file server, plus whatever other services might come in handy (Wiki, print-to-PDF homework handin server, etc).
Jamman960 Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 It all depends on what that single server is actually doing... if its overworked then spread out some of the tasks. non critical workloads/things that could be easily replaced such as AV distribution, printers, WSUS, WDS/RIS could be pushed on to it. It'd be a pain to be without any of those but going without for a day or two or having to restore to a month old backup really wouldn't be the end of the world
box_l Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 Use it for the school to store all those "important" photos and audio teachers dont seem to be able to do without. You know, the ones that would otherwise fill up your nice new server ,(or get deleted). BoX
Guest TheLibrarian Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Second DC & DNS, backup DHCP, script crucial files to copy to it overnight, giving you a nice bit of resilience Single server never a nice place to be... I seconded Achedgy's suggestion. No new storage areas, sharepoint etc. I can't see the point of adding any new services to the network until the school asks for it.
Cools Posted February 25, 2011 Posted February 25, 2011 Second DC & DNS, backup DHCP, script crucial files to copy to it overnight, giving you a nice bit of resilience Single server never a nice place to be... set up DFS and keep the servers synced during the day in case one dies..
edutech4schools Posted February 28, 2011 Author Posted February 28, 2011 Going to look at setting it up as a dc backup possibly with dfs. forward thinking. When I have setup a server in the past I have always added the new server as a domain member moved all the roles and promoted. This ends up with my new server having a different ip and name from the server it replaced is this methode of server setup going to cause any issues within a dc + dc backup enviroment? Also if in a few years I needed to install a new server is it easy to make the dc into a dc backup, remove the old dc backup and have the new server a dc using my server install/setup method above or does the fact I end up with different server ips and names cause issues. Did that make sense? this does add a few extra complications but I would like to learn.
achedgy Posted February 28, 2011 Posted February 28, 2011 Why the rush to remove the old server, if you run them leapfrog fashion, you always have two servers in use. The older one can do the simple things like AV, printers etc and still be a dc, dns server etc, meaning if one server goes down you still have basic services
edutech4schools Posted February 28, 2011 Author Posted February 28, 2011 Sorry for all the questions Lets say I have a dc and dc backup and the dc backup goes down and the school dont want to replace it, are their any issues with ad on the main dc trying to communicate with a server that is no longer on the network. Is it easy to go back to a single server setup without having the dc backup to dcpromo (remove) from.
3s-gtech Posted February 28, 2011 Posted February 28, 2011 If the second DC goes down, just delete it from AD (using Server 2008 or R2 I think) and that'll clean it off fine. You'll then drop down to one again fine.
edutech4schools Posted February 28, 2011 Author Posted February 28, 2011 One last question am I ok having 2008r2 as main dc but 2003 as dc backup or should I push the school to get 2008r2 all round
Guest TheLibrarian Posted February 28, 2011 Posted February 28, 2011 You can take back any roles that the backup DC has (if any) and use ADSI Edit to remove any references to the backup DC from your AD structure.
3s-gtech Posted February 28, 2011 Posted February 28, 2011 Yes you can use 2003 as the OS on the second DC - you won't be able to raise the schema beyond 2003 though so you'll lose a couple of features.
edutech4schools Posted November 27, 2013 Author Posted November 27, 2013 Wow that's going back a few years. All my schools now have 2 physical servers, one of which is running hyper v with 3 virtual server one of these is a second DC, another runs remote desktop server and one wsus etc.
chazzy2501 Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 I really hope that he did this. I wish I'd done this
twin--turbo Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Stick five 2TB SATA harddrives in it and run a bunch of VMs on it - one file server, plus whatever other services might come in handy (Wiki, print-to-PDF homework handin server, etc). With 2GB of ram? Also given that it's got 75G drives ( I suspect that's actualy 72G ) they will be Paralel Scsi rather than SAS so the backplane won't take SATA. Chances are also that the CPU is not up to running a modern Hypervisor. Rob
chazzy2501 Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 No, I was talking about using spare PCs as bitcoin miners in 2011 but never did it as it wasn't cost effective at the time...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now