Real world hardware requirements for AD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steven Davidson
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Steven Davidson

I'm looking for some real world hardware requirements for
AD. I'm not talking about Microsoft's minimum hardware
requirements. Rather, I'm interested in finding out what
people have experienced in reality. What is necessary
from a hardware standpoint (processor speed, memory,
disks, etc) to make AD run smoothly?
 
-----Original Message-----
I'm looking for some real world hardware requirements for
AD. I'm not talking about Microsoft's minimum hardware
requirements. Rather, I'm interested in finding out what
people have experienced in reality. What is necessary
from a hardware standpoint (processor speed, memory,
disks, etc) to make AD run smoothly?
.
Click to expand...
Steven,

Details! Details! Details! Are you talking about
10,000 users or are you talking about 14 users? Is this
going to be the only DC in the environment? or are there
going to be two or three others? Will this/these DC(s)
run other services, such as DNS? DHCP? Exchange 2000?
Will they also be File Servers? Print Servers?
Application Servers? Are you going to be running GPOs (
Software Installation ) from it/them? Will you be making
use of RIS for workstation deployment on it/them? Are we
talking about 10/100 or 10/100/1000 connections? Are we
talking Terminal Server?

And the list goes on!

I would say that if you had a very basic environment with
55 users you could happily use a single PIII - 1GHz /
512MB RAM with a RAID5 configuration. Exchange is best
run on a WIN2000 Member Server. That might warrant more
RAM ( go with 1GB ).

Naturally with the Dell / HP / IBM Servers these days
running Dual XEON 2.4GHz with 1GB+ of RAM we are talking
about really powerful machines that can *probably* handle
multiple services quite nicely.

Do you have any specific environmental specifications in
mind?

HTH,

Cary
 
Sorry about the lack of info. Two seconds after I posted
I figured I left out quite a bit :)

I imagine that we will have a single AD domain.
Basically, we have 6 offices, 400 users and we plan on
running nothing but AD on the DCs. Our DNS server(s)
will reside on member servers and we plan on going to
Exchange 2000 or 2003 sometime after AD rollout (we have
our 5.5 servers on DC for performance but I don't know if
that is recommended for 2000/2003). We run SQL 2000,
Exchange, and Citrix in our environment. We have quite a
few users that access our network via VPN (if that
matters). As for hardware, we have a gigabit backbone
for our servers and we have standardized on Compaq DL
series servers (360, 380, 580).

Basically, one of our admins likes to go overboard on
hardware requirements. Of course, it's hard to argue
with somebody about hardware because bigger and faster is
always better and at the first sight of trouble, they'll
always be the first to say "I told you so". However,
this guy wants to budget $10-$12K per AD server. I think
it is totally excessive and completely overstating the
need. A decent single processor DL-360 G3 w/1GB or RAM
and 36 GB 10000 RPM RAID SCSI should be adequate,
wouldn't you agree?
 
-----Original Message-----
Sorry about the lack of info. Two seconds after I posted
I figured I left out quite a bit :)

I imagine that we will have a single AD domain.
Basically, we have 6 offices, 400 users and we plan on
running nothing but AD on the DCs. Our DNS server(s)
will reside on member servers and we plan on going to
Exchange 2000 or 2003 sometime after AD rollout (we have
our 5.5 servers on DC for performance but I don't know if
that is recommended for 2000/2003). We run SQL 2000,
Exchange, and Citrix in our environment. We have quite a
few users that access our network via VPN (if that
matters). As for hardware, we have a gigabit backbone
for our servers and we have standardized on Compaq DL
series servers (360, 380, 580).

Basically, one of our admins likes to go overboard on
hardware requirements. Of course, it's hard to argue
with somebody about hardware because bigger and faster is
always better and at the first sight of trouble, they'll
always be the first to say "I told you so". However,
this guy wants to budget $10-$12K per AD server. I think
it is totally excessive and completely overstating the
need. A decent single processor DL-360 G3 w/1GB or RAM
and 36 GB 10000 RPM RAID SCSI should be adequate,
wouldn't you agree?


.
Click to expand...
Steven,

I would agree in principal that the single processor DL360
G3 with 1GB of RAM and the RAID5 configuration would be
just fine for a Domain Controller with 400 users. Really
no need for more. Now, thinking ahead is always a good
thing and it might not be if you were to need to use it to
do multiple things. Beancounters ( and I do not mean this
in a derogatory manner - I call us Tech guys Dorks and
Nerds in the same breathe! ) typically do not really
understand why we Dorks have a server doing only one
thing! "Why do you need another server to run Exchange?
I thought that we just bought two servers three months
ago?" is not something that you really want to hear!

And speaking of Exchange, it is best to run that on a
Member Server. Take a look at running WIN2000 Advanced
Server if possible. And Exchange is a RAM hog so put in
2GB if you can swing it. If you do go with Advanced
Server and can swing 1GB / 2GB or RAM then be aware of the
so-called "/3GB boot.ini switch". But that O N L Y
applies to Advanced Server or Data Center Server. Try to
keep Exchange off of a Domain Controller if possible.

HTH,

Cary
 
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