RE: [ActiveDir] Looking for Recommendations

[Brian Desmond]

hmm, I run AD for a school district, I've got about 150K accounts shooting for 500K though.

 

The WAN is a mix of fiber and gig glass, 650 sites total. I have a hub site with two g4 380s - 6x36GB in three mirrors, 4GB RAM, Dual CPUs, etc. They run around 30% CPU each all day and night, 40mb/sec of traffic each. About 30K PCs report in plus about 50 sites replicate in. I have 380s out in 50 of the largest sites though by and large they're not really necessary. The WAN here is very stable. There's another 20K - 30K PCs that aren't domain joined though, but that's a work in progress.

 

Pizza boxes - DL360s or PE1850s is probably fine for that size AD if I had to guess. Really, I'd put a pair of 380s in your hub site, and if you've got heavy Exchange usage maybe dedicate another pair to that and call it a day.

 

Thanks,
Brian Desmond

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 

c - 312.731.3132

 

 

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brenda Casey
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 10:41 AM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: [ActiveDir] Looking for Recommendations

We are looking to upgrade our W2K domain to a W2K3 domain.  At this same time we plan to make the following changes:

 

 - replace W2K DC servers with W2K3 servers

-  upgrade our WAN to fiber, from T-1's

 

We currently have about about 15000 accounts in Active Directory spanning across about 30 locations.  We currently have 1 DC in each location, but would like to consolidate down to a few DC's (with the move to Fiber). 

 

I am wondering if someone either has recommendations for specifications for these servers, or knows of a good web site that can help make these recommendations.   I am also looking for a recommendation for how many DC's we should have with the environment listed above that we plan to migrate to.

 

Thanks in advance for all your help!

 

Thanks,

Brenda

 

Brenda Casey
Network Manager

Billings Public Schools

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

406-247-3792