techyphil Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 We currently have 3 Domain controllers over 3 servers. All the students work come off 1 of the controllers and in performance manager the disk queueing is most of the time at 100%. This causes the whole network to be really slow, clicking start on any workstation becomes a waiting game. My idea is to get another server in, use file replication services and somehow get them working in a way that if 1 machine is being used heavily, then get the students work from the other server... Everyone talks about it in books and at conferences and makes it sound easy... Is it easy and is it the right thing to do? Whats involved? Thanks for all your support, cheers guys
ChrisH Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 How many workstations Spec of servers including disk array etc More details please
MK-2 Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 I know it may not be ideal, but what about spreading the home folders over the 3 servers? So: Server 1 - Y7 / Y8 Server 2 - Y9 / Y10 Server 3 - Y11 / STAFF That way all home folders aren't utilising space on all servers? I dunno, just a thought
techyphil Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 Server 1 - Hosting the students folders is a HP Proliant ML370. 1700 Users 500 Workstations Servers are- 2GB Ram 4 x 72gb SCSI 10rpm's. Stripped and Mirrored
mrforgetful Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 We use the method of just having certain year groups work on certain servers. What's not a great idea that we have is one of them is the Exchange Server aswell.
techyphil Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 So how's that work when year's progress? Moving students from 1 place to another then highlighting the users, change the profile and home dir to the new server... Seems easily possible... surely someone here has load balancing?
mrforgetful Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 The work stays where it is. At the moment we have: Server1: 8 and 9 and staff Server2: 10 and 11 Server3: 7 and 12 and 13 Next year, these will all stay on the same servers as they are, the Year 13s will be removed and the new Year 7 will probably go on Server 3 aswell. Whichever server has the least amount of users on at the start of a new school year will get the new year 7s on it.
mrforgetful Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/clustering/resources.mspx Take a look.
Geoff Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 We've split things up like that. However we use DFS to keep the naming structure uniform. Therefore we have the following servers amphion -> student my documents. zethus -> staff my documents ch05 -> subject areas ch04 -> applications When exported out via DFS it ends up looking like this: \\carrhill\shares\year7\ ..... \\carrhill\shares\year13\ \\carrhill\shares\staff\ \\carrhill\shares\subject areas\ \\carrhill\shares\apps\ You can use these DFS generated UNC names anywhere.
mrforgetful Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 How do you enlist the help of this chain of Sofa shops to do this? Sounds helpful. It means I wouldn't need to have a list on my wall then saying which users work is on which server?
Geoff Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/storage/dfs/default.mspx No you don't. Plus it means if you have replace or move servers around you can do so without upsetting the names everything else is using. A word of warning though, don't bother attempting to do any replication with DFS, it doesn't work reliably.
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