And I wholeheartedly applaud dreaming. Without it we'd still be in a dark wet cave, chewing on roots and hoping to keep warm ;-)
It's just that I don't think the licensing case is the big issue. I would guess that Microsoft licensing would find another way to get the pound of flesh. I don't think for a minute that they shouldn't either. Because of that market force, I tend to disassociate the licensing from the solution altogether. Take that away, and I'm not sure that you have solved your technical problem by avoiding the hardware purchase. I have to admit, it sounds cliche but the hardware is cheap. Very cheap and you'd likely have to include bigger hardware to get multiple domains installed anyway. The OS is not taking copious amounts of memory last I checked (128 is fine for just the OS). It's those silly apps that require so much. And if you have to load test, then you're deeper in the water because you'll take the rest of the domains down to their knees while you use one of the others. Virtualization offers a better technical solution in that you can keep them totally separate from each other. They rely on a common OS, so the only real difference is the memory overhead and some of the OS overhead you otherwise might not have. The tradeoff is the stability that comes with the separation and a higher maintenance cost while you rev the OS across 9 instances of the OS. I see that. But there's also some flexibility in that approach because I am not required to upgrade all 9 instances at once. I can create a test environment that works with multiple versions at a time vs. all upgrade at once, like IIS requires (that's a shared code issue, not to pick on IIS). I have to say I think it's a great idea to dream Charlie, but I don't get the advantage of multiple domains (as they exist today) over virtualization. Thanks for clarifying though. We'll have to wait and see how it pans out I suppose. Cheers, Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charlie Kaiser Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 3:42 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory wish list The limitations of the VMs are the underlying hardware, in our case. I have 9 VMs running on one server. It's choking for more RAM, but management won't foot the bill for the additional riser card and ram. Otherwise, no limitations in functionality. If I had adequate hdw to run the VMs I could use VMs more gracefully. I've used/use desktop hdw to run testlab machines, but scalability and user experience testing is indeed a factor for some things. The underlying "wish" here was to be able to put multiple AD DCs on one piece of hdw/OS. Instead of having to build 3 VMs or physical machines, be able to run 3 domains on one, with AD running as a service, kinda like the way IIS can run multiple websites, or SQL can run multiple DBs (although it's at a lower level than either of those apps). If I could run 3 domains on 2 servers instead of 6, I would imagine that I'd save on licensing costs as well as hdw, since running an AD service would likely be less hdw intensive than running an OS... We can dream, can't we? :-) ********************** Charlie Kaiser W2K3 MCSA/MCSE/Security, CCNA Systems Engineer Essex Credit / Brickwalk 510 595 5083 ********************** > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick > Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 10:28 AM > To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org > Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Active Directory wish list > > I agree. SMB business can be very complex. > > Can you expand on the idea that VM's aren't working well for > you? I'm trying > to understand the difference between that and a multiple > domain DC for that > scenario. > > I'd have to say that smaller, cheaper dc's (desktop class?) > have always > worked well for me in the past when doing functionality testing. > Scalability requires full-blown hardware. But I'm not seeing where VM > environments aren't working as well as you'd like a physical > environment to > work? What's the difference in this situation? > > For availability, I could see some value in a DC configured > to host mulitple > domains because I could designate one to be the failover for several > domains. Otherwise, I'm not sure I get it. Is this like a > LPAR concept > you're talking about? That would be more helpful to you in > these situations? > If so, how is that different than VM's? > > Test environments are notoriously able to take down servers > without warning. > I would often prefer to use a VM to decrease that risk of > consuming all > resources to destruction. That provides some isolation while > not requiring > extra hardware. > > VM's require licenses (the OS and apps do) FWIW. You're only > saving on the > hardware and environmentals that I can see, but I'm trying to > understand > what I'm missing. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Charlie Kaiser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org> > Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 11:05 AM > Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory wish list > > > For us, it's the ability to run parallel domains for test/development > purposes. We have our production domain, my IT test domain, and our > LOB application test domain. I'd have another IT test domain if I had > the available hardware right now. > We are required to test and document all changes to the LOB app and a > significant number of people work in that test domain. > Running it on VMs > or old hardware doesn't cut it gracefully, although that's what I do. > Since management won't write the check for additional > hardware/licenses, > we do what we can. > But if we had one beefy server to replace 3, and one server license to > replace 3, it would be much more cost effective to do, and would > increase performance for the user community. > In my last gig, we had multiple domains that were used for development > and customer support departments. The support kids especially needed > multiple domains to recreate customer environments and > various software > versions. > I can think of a lot of reasons to need multiple domains/forests in an > SMB environment. Regulatory compliance, 24x7 availability > that mandates > full testing prior to implementation in production, customer support > domains, etc. Just because a business is small doesn't mean it can't > have complex requirements... > > ********************** > Charlie Kaiser > W2K3 MCSA/MCSE/Security, CCNA > Systems Engineer > Essex Credit / Brickwalk > 510 595 5083 > ********************** > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick > > Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 7:10 AM > > To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org > > Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory wish list > > I'm curious, Charlie and Neil. What services do these SMB's offer > > that they need multiple instances of DC's? I realize that a best > > practice is to have > > multiple servers that can provide some failure tolerant > > behaviors, but I'm > > wondering what type of work a SMB does that requires multiple > > full blown AD > > domain instances and therefore multiple servers etc. Can you > > expand that? > List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
