Site Server Requirements.

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I have a problem that needs some expert advice.

My company is planning on deploying Active Directory. Our current network
consists of NT 4.0 domain controllers with a single master account domain
and 18 resource domain controllers. (approx 3100 users/workstations)

We hired a consulting company to help plan our upgrade. The consulting
company came back and recommended that we should have a single forest domain
model ( consists of a COMPANY.root domain and a COMPANY.local domain where
the accounts and machine objects go.).

Because my company has multiple regional offices the consulting firm
recommended that we place 2 domain controllers in each remote location to
provide for fault tolerance of the active directory infrastructure. (each
remote office is connected to the WAN with a 10 Meg connection. Head office
connection of course is > 80 meg. This all runs under a SONNET WAN Network)

The number of Workstations/users per location is highlighted in the
following list: (We have a total of 3094 users/workstation )


Location A 5
Location B 1396 (HEAD OFFICE)
Location C 10
Location D 85
Location E 115
Location F 72
Location G 110
Location H 12
Location I 81
Location J 47
Location K 65
Location L 14
Location M 71
Location N 13
Location O 134
Location P 8
Location Q 14
Location R 842

Grand Total 3094

So here is the problem. The consulting company is recommending the following
specs for all the locations: (same server Model/config everywhere)

Each Location would have 2 (TWO) servers with the following configuration:

Processor Xeon 2.8 GHz # of Processors 2 L2 Cache 1024K
Memory 2 GB

Disks 6

Array 1 Tolerance RAID 1
Available 73 GB
Operating System C: 36 GB
AD Log Logical Drives D: 36 GB

Array 2 Tolerance RAID 5
Available 146 GB
AD Database,
SYSVOL Logical Drives E:

Spare Drive Hot Spare 1 x 73 GB

This amounts to 12K of server hardware per location!!! (~6K per box not
counting the cost for software)
36 Servers (216,000 K) in servers

So my problem here is.... I believe the consulting company is over spec'ing
the hardware for most of my sites.
I don't know what a good configuration spec is for some of these
sites....but this seems very excessive for MOST of the locations.
I could see needing better equipment for my sites that approach 1000
users/machines..... But do I really need two dual process 2.8Gig Xeon system
per site???

Considering my NT 4.0 domain is running on Pentium Pro CPU's and seems
hardly utilized. Is AD that much more CPU intensive??? Is AD this much more
Fragile to operate that it requires all this redundancy??? Or do I need to
find a better consulting company????

Help



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Site Server Requirements.
    ... what were the design requirements? ... servers for 5 users is huge overkill. ... Many of the diverse multi-site designs I have done spec'ed server hardware ... We hired a consulting company to help plan our upgrade. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)
  • RE: DSAccess Problems
    ... Eight Domain Controllers are here in Brazil and one at ... the two Exchange Servers are using the Domain Controllers from Hongk ... links to view our Domain Controllers Policy and Servers Members ...
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    (microsoft.public.windows.server.migration)
  • Re: Site Server Requirements.
    ... The design Requirements: ... independent paths to the WAN being the most critical to the business. ... All sites have their own exchange Server, File Servers, and Misc. ... We hired a consulting company to help plan our upgrade. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)
  • Re: net use and LM / NTLM
    ... Kerberos authentication is used between Windows 2000 machines in a Windows ... verify that all domain controllers for users who log on to ... controllers") MUST have been upgraded to SP4. ... with earlier servers exactly as it did with Service Pack 3. ...
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