mthomas08 Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 So title says it all, which would you all go for. I have 1600 users, about 800 computers, I plan on having a few DCs down the line to help with the load. Our current PDC isnt a bulky one but it has managed well and never seems to be over loaded. Windows 2008 R2 64x is the OS we plan on going with. I personally am a Dell fan, but by all means go for other suppliers. So which what spec would you go for if you had the 5K for a new PDC. We have also purchased a new email server for 5k which will have exchange 2010 on it I believe I once got told to get two new servers and virtualise them as well. So thoughts and comments perhaps?
localzuk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 Is the server going to do anything other than Active Directory?
mthomas08 Posted April 7, 2011 Author Report Posted April 7, 2011 Guess I should have added that. Tricky one that, on one side I have dedicated PDC and nothing more (So yes AD/DHCP/DNS/GPO and thats it). On another side some one mentioned to me having the above and have Hyper V on it for any future servers you may require (given the added HD/RAM etc).
DAZZD88 Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 Is the server going to do anything other than Active Directory? If not, I'd think 5k is a bit overkill.
pantscat Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 5K?!! Seems a bit steep for a DC. But... if you're planning on turning it into a virtual host, then 5k could be very worthwhile. Ideally you'd have a SAN for failover and HA (e.g. if one virtual host fails, then the other could still "power" the machines that are on the shared storage) - but you'll struggle to get a SAN plus two hosts for 10k. So... 5k would get you a very nice HP ML350 G6 box with a couple of quad core processors, two dual-port NICs, 64GB RAM and a fair few disks for storage - 1TB SAS drives seem to be fairly reasonable at the moment. Perfect for running Hyper-V, or just plain old ESXi.
pete Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 Is it gold plated? Like localzuk said if all it's doing is a DC, you don't need to spend that much. Two SAS disks + hot spare in a mirror on a decent hardware raid card, redundant psus, decent chunk of ram and a low-end quad core processor. DCs don't actually do much heavy lifting, but they do need to be highly available. Say an R310 1U from Dell.
localzuk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 (edited) Guess I should have added that. Tricky one that, on one side I have dedicated PDC and nothing more (So yes AD/DHCP/DNS/GPO and thats it). On another side some one mentioned to me having the above and have Hyper V on it for any future servers you may require (given the added HD/RAM etc). None of that uses a lot of resources. Our AD server with DNS and DHCP has maxed out at 13.48% of a single 2.8Ghz Xeon core. It also has maxed out at 315Mb RAM used (server 2k3 r2 for us, so 2k8 r2 will be a little higher). Disk usage is max of 291Kbps too... So, AD machines really don't need much. I would suggest buying 2x £2.5k boxes and virtualising across them instead. EDIT: That's for about 600 users, 250 computers in total. Edited April 7, 2011 by localzuk
pantscat Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 @localzuk (sorry to OP for hijack!) - what do you use for benchmarking? Those are some interesting stats.
mthomas08 Posted April 7, 2011 Author Report Posted April 7, 2011 Thats what is going through my mind, our current one isnt pushed at all, it was previously our Home/public drives too and no additional DCs. The new one will sit there as a PDC and nothing more or .... that is where other things are going through my mind. When the orders go through I will have two brand new servers. And some one once mentioned about Virtualising them both, we currently have a Hyper V box which has 4 VMs on it and works a treat. I have a little niggle in my neck about virtualising Exchange and PDC/DCs. DC I wouldnt have a problem with but Exchange is much more critical and so is a PDC. Guess I was not so specific
localzuk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 @localzuk (sorry to OP for hijack!) - what do you use for benchmarking? Those are some interesting stats. Its running in VMWare ESXi, so I just look at the performance statistics on that. Thats what is going through my mind, our current one isnt pushed at all, it was previously our Home/public drives too and no additional DCs. The new one will sit there as a PDC and nothing more or .... that is where other things are going through my mind. When the orders go through I will have two brand new servers. And some one once mentioned about Virtualising them both, we currently have a Hyper V box which has 4 VMs on it and works a treat. I have a little niggle in my neck about virtualising Exchange and PDC/DCs. DC I wouldnt have a problem with but Exchange is much more critical and so is a PDC. Guess I was not so specific All our active directory servers are virtualised. I can't see it being an issue.
mthomas08 Posted April 7, 2011 Author Report Posted April 7, 2011 All our active directory servers are virtualised. I can't see it being an issue. Does that include the PDC?
pantscat Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 @localzuk - Ah... ok. Assumed the DC was physical.
localzuk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 (edited) Does that include the PDC? Active directory doesn't use 'PDC' any more, not since NT4 era, but yes, all active directory servers are virtualised. You have to be careful with time on them - ie. don't use 'suspend' features etc... They've been virtualised here for at least 3 years without any issues so far. Edited April 7, 2011 by localzuk
Gibbo Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 We use a couple of entry level Proliant ML115 as DCs. They're never pushed and do the job perfectly well. Student log ons are about 4 seconds.
pantscat Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 @localzuk - just out of interest as I've been thinking about virtualising all my DCs, do you use an external time source?
localzuk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 @localzuk - just out of interest as I've been thinking about virtualising all my DCs, do you use an external time source? Yes, at the moment our on-site time server is also our phone server, and it syncs with the SWGfL's time server. All machines then either sync with that server, or with the active directory servers, which themselves synch with the phone server. 2
ezzauk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 For our DC's we Use the Dell Poweredge R210 4gb ram, 160gb raid 1, quad core. Costs about 1.5K
mthomas08 Posted April 7, 2011 Author Report Posted April 7, 2011 Active directory doesn't use 'PDC' any more, not since NT4 era, but yes, all active directory servers are virtualised. You have to be careful with time on them - ie. don't use 'suspend' features etc... They've been virtualised here for at least 3 years without any issues so far. Sorry old fasioned and old habbit on that front, I refer to: which holds the global catalogue, dns and dhcp and is top of the forrest, just reading a few things and the "suggestion" is to have at least one physical DC. Obviously if its working for you then thats great to know as an option for us to go down.
localzuk Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 Sorry old fasioned and old habbit on that front, I refer to: which holds the global catalogue, dns and dhcp and is top of the forrest, just reading a few things and the "suggestion" is to have at least one physical DC. Obviously if its working for you then thats great to know as an option for us to go down. The issues that can occur with AD servers when virtualised are down to use of things like 'suspend' and 'snapshots'. These sort of technologies 'turn back time', which Active Directory does not like and can cause serious issues. So, instead of treating the virtualised ADCs as virtual machines, you simply treat them as physical hosts - backing them up in the traditional way instead of via snapshots etc... 1
teejay Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 Sorry old fasioned and old habbit on that front, I refer to: which holds the global catalogue, dns and dhcp and is top of the forrest, just reading a few things and the "suggestion" is to have at least one physical DC. Obviously if its working for you then thats great to know as an option for us to go down. There were problems with virtualising your main DC with earlier versions of virtualisation software, but not anymore. A lot of the online articles on this are out of date. As localzuk has said, as long as you avoid snapshotting the things it's fine. The only thing I would say is that you are better installing a new DC from scratch and transferring the roles from the old one than doing a physical to virtual conversion. The big advantage is that you make the machine pretty much hardware agnostic, so if you need to move it onto another box it's very simple to do, great for disaster recovery and future upgrades. 2
Butuz Posted April 7, 2011 Report Posted April 7, 2011 teejay hit the naill on the head. "hardware agnostic" is by far the biggest benefit of virtualisation with something like the free version of VmWare esxi. Your servers available on pretty much any hardware you like, even a £400 quad core workstation if you need it in a disaster scenario. Butuz
mthomas08 Posted April 7, 2011 Author Report Posted April 7, 2011 Had been reading about snapshots and AD dont mix, Things to consider when you host Active Directory domain controllers in virtual hosting environments Been doing my home work, and as stated earlier I like my options Thanks guys you are great help as always, now we just need to decide here exactly what path we want to take with these servers.
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