Windows 2003 Domain Server ​Reccomendat​ions

I am in the process of upgrading our windows 2000 network to 2003.  I have purchased 2 new Domain Controllers that are only going to be used as DCs.  I am thinking about getting another server to be only DNS and DHCP.  Are there any other roles that I am not thinking about?  Please let me know what you guys think would be the best setup. 

Thanks,

Scott

It depends on the size of your network, and how many users you have.

I happily ran a 500+ machine network with 1300+ users from 2 Win2k3 servers for 2 years with no problems.  They weren't massively powerful boxes either, Dual Core Athlon MP 2200s with 1Gb RAM and 2x72Gb SCSI HDs each.

After upgrading our servers, replacing the 2 with 5 new boxes, I didn't notice that much of a difference when monitoring the servers to be honest.

Server 2003 can handle a lot, but for a bit of reilience, obviously, more can be better, if the budget allows of course

I agree with you on the size.  I know that I am going a little over kill, but I want to get things going right.  We have approx 500 users.  What services do you guys reccoemnd on each box?

DC1 - AD


DC2 - AD


Server1 DHCP, DNS

sdanton wrote:

I am in the process of upgrading our windows 2000 network to 2003.  I have purchased 2 new Domain Controllers that are only going to be used as DCs.  I am thinking about getting another server to be only DNS and DHCP.  Are there any other roles that I am not thinking about?  Please let me know what you guys think would be the best setup. 

Thanks,

Scott

Personally, I think it's a good idea to run both DNS and AD on the same box, it's not as though they use a massive amount resources, and you get redundancy there.

You could shove IIS on there and put up some departmental websites, maybe Streaming Media Services so you can broadcast your favourite ch00ns over the LAN (until upper management finds out about it and starts insisting their "Mission Statement" is played down it as an interstital every 5 minutes, then you know it's time to go start looking for another job).

blowdart wrote:



W3bbo wrote:  You could shove IIS on there

NO. Do not put IIS, SQL or anything that requires its own account on a domain controller. It's a stupid security risk.

What if it was a Read-Only Domain Controller?

Following a consultation with my former employers favourite consultant, our setup ended up like this:

	Server 1	Server 2	Server 3	Server 4	Server 5
Domain Controller	X		X
DNS	X		X
DHCP	X
Global Catalog	X		X
WSUS	X
Operations Manager	X
Schema Master	X
Infrastructure Master	X
File Store		X
Printers		X
Sharepoint		X
SQL Server					X
Exchange			X
ISA				X
RID			X

There were 3 more servers which ran specific services, but these were the main 5.

Can someone tell me what RID is?