| Author |
Message |
Steven Bellamy
Guest
|
 Posted:
Mon Jul 04, 2005 8:58 am Post subject:
Exchange 2003 server as AD controller |
|
|
Hi,
We're a small company with under 100 employees and are looking to
migrate our Windows 2000 (2x PIII 733GHz, 1.5 GB RAM) and Exchange 5.5
Standard server to a server running Windows 2003 (2x P4 3GHz, 4GB RAM)
and Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Currently, the Exchange 5.5 W2K server is the main AD server (holds the
FSMO roles) and we've had no problems with it acting as an AD server, in
fact it has performed better than expected...
We've spoken to a few Microsoft partners and they have made proposals to
do a migration into a new AD forest (which is not the issue), but in the
process, they want to add an additional 2 servers to act as the AD
controllers and the Exchange 2003 server to be a member server...
I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore...
What I want to know is, considering that we have under 100 employees who
are not heavy e-mail users, is it possible to configure the Exchange
2003 server to act as an AD controller (considering that SBS acts as an
AD controller as well as an Exchange server)?
Secondly, if we choose to make the new Exchange server an AD controller
and the performance is poor, can we simply demote/remove AD from the
exchange server without any problems (provided that there is another
server acting as an AD controller)?
Thanks for the help!
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|
 |
Al Mulnick
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Jul 04, 2005 4:59 pm Post subject:
Re: Exchange 2003 server as AD controller |
|
|
"I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore..."
I don't see that the same way. It can be simpler to restore Exchange to a
dedicated server after bringing up the name resolution, AD etc. vs having it
integrated on the same server. Tapes can hold both and can back it up
across the network with the built-in NT backup if you want.
Can Exchange run on the same server as the DC. Absolutely. Why is it a
best practice to separate it then? Because if Exchange runs on a DC, it
will only ever use that DC as it's directory. It will never fail over or
use the other AD server as a DC and so you can get better resiliency if you
separate the server roles.
In your case, it wouldn't bother me to run Exchange on the same server if
that met your needs and you were OK with the complexity, possible down time,
etc. vs an extra server to run Exchange. It's a choice to make. My
preference and a best practice in many organizations would be to separate
the server roles. For 100 light users, that may not be the most effective
use of resources; not enough information to tell from this post, but I'm
sure your partners have more information to go by.
IIRC, just demoting a DC that runs Exchange has some issues associated with
it. I don't recall exactly what those issues are anymore.
Al
"Steven Bellamy" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:udN1nPHgFHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | Hi,
We're a small company with under 100 employees and are looking to migrate
our Windows 2000 (2x PIII 733GHz, 1.5 GB RAM) and Exchange 5.5 Standard
server to a server running Windows 2003 (2x P4 3GHz, 4GB RAM) and Exchange
2003 Enterprise Edition.
Currently, the Exchange 5.5 W2K server is the main AD server (holds the
FSMO roles) and we've had no problems with it acting as an AD server, in
fact it has performed better than expected...
We've spoken to a few Microsoft partners and they have made proposals to
do a migration into a new AD forest (which is not the issue), but in the
process, they want to add an additional 2 servers to act as the AD
controllers and the Exchange 2003 server to be a member server...
I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore...
What I want to know is, considering that we have under 100 employees who
are not heavy e-mail users, is it possible to configure the Exchange 2003
server to act as an AD controller (considering that SBS acts as an AD
controller as well as an Exchange server)?
Secondly, if we choose to make the new Exchange server an AD controller
and the performance is poor, can we simply demote/remove AD from the
exchange server without any problems (provided that there is another
server acting as an AD controller)?
Thanks for the help! |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Al Mulnick
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Jul 05, 2005 4:59 pm Post subject:
Re: Exchange 2003 server as AD controller |
|
|
I don't. Although you may be able to extrapolate some information based on
the AD and Exchange sizer tools. Just keep in mind both will have disk
impact and you wouldn't want two busy systems to compete for the same
spindles.
Al
"Steven Bellamy" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23JW1LHWgFHA.2700@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | Al,
Thanks for the reply.
I did a little more research and am aware of the problems of running
Exchange and AD on the same server, such as the problems you mentioned
below plus other such as it's not possible to remove AD from the server
once Exchange has been installed...
DO you know where I can find any benchmark on the performance impacts on a
server running both Exchange and AD?
Thanks
Al Mulnick wrote:
"I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore..."
I don't see that the same way. It can be simpler to restore Exchange to
a dedicated server after bringing up the name resolution, AD etc. vs
having it integrated on the same server. Tapes can hold both and can
back it up across the network with the built-in NT backup if you want.
Can Exchange run on the same server as the DC. Absolutely. Why is it a
best practice to separate it then? Because if Exchange runs on a DC, it
will only ever use that DC as it's directory. It will never fail over or
use the other AD server as a DC and so you can get better resiliency if
you separate the server roles.
In your case, it wouldn't bother me to run Exchange on the same server if
that met your needs and you were OK with the complexity, possible down
time, etc. vs an extra server to run Exchange. It's a choice to make.
My preference and a best practice in many organizations would be to
separate the server roles. For 100 light users, that may not be the most
effective use of resources; not enough information to tell from this
post, but I'm sure your partners have more information to go by.
IIRC, just demoting a DC that runs Exchange has some issues associated
with it. I don't recall exactly what those issues are anymore.
Al
"Steven Bellamy" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:udN1nPHgFHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
Hi,
We're a small company with under 100 employees and are looking to migrate
our Windows 2000 (2x PIII 733GHz, 1.5 GB RAM) and Exchange 5.5 Standard
server to a server running Windows 2003 (2x P4 3GHz, 4GB RAM) and
Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Currently, the Exchange 5.5 W2K server is the main AD server (holds the
FSMO roles) and we've had no problems with it acting as an AD server, in
fact it has performed better than expected...
We've spoken to a few Microsoft partners and they have made proposals to
do a migration into a new AD forest (which is not the issue), but in the
process, they want to add an additional 2 servers to act as the AD
controllers and the Exchange 2003 server to be a member server...
I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore...
What I want to know is, considering that we have under 100 employees who
are not heavy e-mail users, is it possible to configure the Exchange 2003
server to act as an AD controller (considering that SBS acts as an AD
controller as well as an Exchange server)?
Secondly, if we choose to make the new Exchange server an AD controller
and the performance is poor, can we simply demote/remove AD from the
exchange server without any problems (provided that there is another
server acting as an AD controller)?
Thanks for the help!
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Steven Bellamy
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Jul 05, 2005 4:59 pm Post subject:
Re: Exchange 2003 server as AD controller |
|
|
Al,
Thanks for the reply.
I did a little more research and am aware of the problems of running
Exchange and AD on the same server, such as the problems you mentioned
below plus other such as it's not possible to remove AD from the server
once Exchange has been installed...
DO you know where I can find any benchmark on the performance impacts on
a server running both Exchange and AD?
Thanks
Al Mulnick wrote:
| Quote: | "I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore..."
I don't see that the same way. It can be simpler to restore Exchange to a
dedicated server after bringing up the name resolution, AD etc. vs having it
integrated on the same server. Tapes can hold both and can back it up
across the network with the built-in NT backup if you want.
Can Exchange run on the same server as the DC. Absolutely. Why is it a
best practice to separate it then? Because if Exchange runs on a DC, it
will only ever use that DC as it's directory. It will never fail over or
use the other AD server as a DC and so you can get better resiliency if you
separate the server roles.
In your case, it wouldn't bother me to run Exchange on the same server if
that met your needs and you were OK with the complexity, possible down time,
etc. vs an extra server to run Exchange. It's a choice to make. My
preference and a best practice in many organizations would be to separate
the server roles. For 100 light users, that may not be the most effective
use of resources; not enough information to tell from this post, but I'm
sure your partners have more information to go by.
IIRC, just demoting a DC that runs Exchange has some issues associated with
it. I don't recall exactly what those issues are anymore.
Al
"Steven Bellamy" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:udN1nPHgFHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
Hi,
We're a small company with under 100 employees and are looking to migrate
our Windows 2000 (2x PIII 733GHz, 1.5 GB RAM) and Exchange 5.5 Standard
server to a server running Windows 2003 (2x P4 3GHz, 4GB RAM) and Exchange
2003 Enterprise Edition.
Currently, the Exchange 5.5 W2K server is the main AD server (holds the
FSMO roles) and we've had no problems with it acting as an AD server, in
fact it has performed better than expected...
We've spoken to a few Microsoft partners and they have made proposals to
do a migration into a new AD forest (which is not the issue), but in the
process, they want to add an additional 2 servers to act as the AD
controllers and the Exchange 2003 server to be a member server...
I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore...
What I want to know is, considering that we have under 100 employees who
are not heavy e-mail users, is it possible to configure the Exchange 2003
server to act as an AD controller (considering that SBS acts as an AD
controller as well as an Exchange server)?
Secondly, if we choose to make the new Exchange server an AD controller
and the performance is poor, can we simply demote/remove AD from the
exchange server without any problems (provided that there is another
server acting as an AD controller)?
Thanks for the help!
|
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| Back to top |
|
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Steven Bellamy
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Jul 07, 2005 2:56 pm Post subject:
Re: Exchange 2003 server as AD controller |
|
|
Thanks for the advice. This has been taken into account and the server
will have two arrays, one for the OS and the other for the exchange
environment.
Cheers
Al Mulnick wrote:
| Quote: | I don't. Although you may be able to extrapolate some information based on
the AD and Exchange sizer tools. Just keep in mind both will have disk
impact and you wouldn't want two busy systems to compete for the same
spindles.
Al
"Steven Bellamy" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23JW1LHWgFHA.2700@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
Al,
Thanks for the reply.
I did a little more research and am aware of the problems of running
Exchange and AD on the same server, such as the problems you mentioned
below plus other such as it's not possible to remove AD from the server
once Exchange has been installed...
DO you know where I can find any benchmark on the performance impacts on a
server running both Exchange and AD?
Thanks
Al Mulnick wrote:
"I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore..."
I don't see that the same way. It can be simpler to restore Exchange to
a dedicated server after bringing up the name resolution, AD etc. vs
having it integrated on the same server. Tapes can hold both and can
back it up across the network with the built-in NT backup if you want.
Can Exchange run on the same server as the DC. Absolutely. Why is it a
best practice to separate it then? Because if Exchange runs on a DC, it
will only ever use that DC as it's directory. It will never fail over or
use the other AD server as a DC and so you can get better resiliency if
you separate the server roles.
In your case, it wouldn't bother me to run Exchange on the same server if
that met your needs and you were OK with the complexity, possible down
time, etc. vs an extra server to run Exchange. It's a choice to make.
My preference and a best practice in many organizations would be to
separate the server roles. For 100 light users, that may not be the most
effective use of resources; not enough information to tell from this
post, but I'm sure your partners have more information to go by.
IIRC, just demoting a DC that runs Exchange has some issues associated
with it. I don't recall exactly what those issues are anymore.
Al
"Steven Bellamy" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:udN1nPHgFHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
Hi,
We're a small company with under 100 employees and are looking to migrate
our Windows 2000 (2x PIII 733GHz, 1.5 GB RAM) and Exchange 5.5 Standard
server to a server running Windows 2003 (2x P4 3GHz, 4GB RAM) and
Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Currently, the Exchange 5.5 W2K server is the main AD server (holds the
FSMO roles) and we've had no problems with it acting as an AD server, in
fact it has performed better than expected...
We've spoken to a few Microsoft partners and they have made proposals to
do a migration into a new AD forest (which is not the issue), but in the
process, they want to add an additional 2 servers to act as the AD
controllers and the Exchange 2003 server to be a member server...
I do realise that this is the recommended design for Exchange, however,
adding an additional 2 servers into our network is going to increase the
complexity of the network as well as cause more problems during disaster
recovery I.e. more tapes, more servers to restore...
What I want to know is, considering that we have under 100 employees who
are not heavy e-mail users, is it possible to configure the Exchange 2003
server to act as an AD controller (considering that SBS acts as an AD
controller as well as an Exchange server)?
Secondly, if we choose to make the new Exchange server an AD controller
and the performance is poor, can we simply demote/remove AD from the
exchange server without any problems (provided that there is another
server acting as an AD controller)?
Thanks for the help!
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