RE: [ActiveDir] Exchange rollout - How much larger does NTDS.DIT become?

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:27:28 -0700

Sorry, I should have put everything together by subject before responding before.
 
My experiences range pretty widely with how much the DIT will grow with the inclusion of Exchange. Again, it depends entirely on what is already there and what it will end up with for the GAL. One experience had a GC DIT of about 900MB or so for 250,000 users, at least that many machines, about 100k groups (No DLs, all Security, non were Exchange enabled) or so go to somewhere around 6-8GB after the Exchange data population. Some other experiences were with small numbers of people (relative to forest size) actually getting Exchange enabled so the growth was measured in a couple of hundred MB.
 
 
  joe
 
 
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O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm 
 
 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Hargraves
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 4:46 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Exchange rollout - How much larger does NTDS.DIT become?

I'm not sure what else he's running on his DC.  He might be running complex intrusion detection software, DNS, WINS, etc....

I have to assume that he's got 4GB worth of RAM and plenty of 'crap' (ok, maybe not crap, but you know what I'm saying) running on the DC that I'm sure plenty of us would love to see running on a different box.

The "1.25GB" comment wasn't regarding any limitations to 32-bit Windows.  It was more involving "I seriously doubt that your DIT is going to double in size unless you're populating as few as possible fields and have like 3 groups per user" than anything.

You made a comment about him having a large environment with 100k+ users to have a 650MB DIT and I just kinda went "Huh?" because we're running a 3+GB DIT with just over half that number.  Every environment is completely different and there are a lot of different things that impact the DIT outside of user count.  Groups, GPOs, OUs, computer objects etc.... user count might be a reasonable guage, but I don't think that ~6k DIT per user object is a reasonable assumption unless it's a newer environment with a nice spanking new RBS model.



On 8/1/06, Grillenmeier, Guido <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Richard doesn't seem to be too keen on giving us further details – too bad.

 

But not sure why you – Matt - are talking about "breaking 1.25 GB" with respects to the 32-bit capabilities. By default 32-bit Win2003 DCs can cache a DIT up to approx. 1.5GB, which grows to 2.6-2.7GB using the /3GB switch (provided sufficient physical memory). 

 

But irrespective of these limitations, I'd argue you should move to Win2003 64bit DC anyways if you can. For example if you are doing a hardware refresh at the same time. It is cheaper (meaning you can support more memory for less licensing costs) and it will give you much more room to grow for the future. 64bit drivers for x64 server hardware are no longer an issue and even other important add-ons and management tools such as AV and Backup etc. are catching up quickly. So try not to use the 32bit WinOS versions for AD DCs, even if they still handle the load today – you'll do yourself a favor by moving to 64bit DCs as soon as you can. Time to learn all those little quirks and challenges around handling this OS. This way you'll be best prepared for when you really need to use 64bit Windows for other applications.

 

/Guido

 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt Hargraves
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 12:02 AM

Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Exchange rollout - How much larger does NTDS.DIT become?

 

I guess the gist of what everyone is saying can be summed up with the following:

What does the current environment look like?
How extensive is your Exchange deployment going to be?

Without some of that information, it's only going to be a vague guess that anyone can give.  I seriously doubt you need to worry about breaking 1.25 GB, which is still well within the capability of a 32-bit server to handle.



On 7/29/06, joe < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

To further add to this, it depends considerably on how populated you want your GAL to be. Some people just let the mandatory Exchange attributes get populated, others want the GAL to be the one stop shop for info on employees so everything goes into the GAL which means everything goes into AD.

 

--

O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm  

 

 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Grillenmeier, Guido
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:41 AM

Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Exchange rollout - How much larger does NTDS.DIT become?

Assuming this is after defrag, 650MB without Exchange is quite a large AD – guess you'd be close to 100k users in your forest, if you've used the "standard" attributes of the objects in AD (and haven't added stuff like thumbnail pictures to your users…).

 

After adding the Exchange schema mods, the DIT shouldn't grow substantially, since AD doesn't use any space for unused attributes – and the Exchange attributes for your object won't be filled magically, until you mail-enable them. But once they are filled, it will impact your AD (e.g. E2k3 adds 130 attributes to the Public Information property set used by user class objects)

 

It is very tough to make a guess at the actual size you'd have with a fully deployed Exchange, but if you do mail-enable the majority of your users (i.e. give them Exchange mailboxes) and add DLs etc. and assuming my guess with 100k users is in the right ballpark your AD DIT would easily grow to 3-5 GB.

 

/Guido

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of RM
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 6:46 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: [ActiveDir] Exchange rollout - How much larger does NTDS.DIT become?

 

NTDS.DIT is currently 650megs.  Once Exchange has been fully deployed, any guesses as to how much larger it will become?  Just looking for a ballpark figure...

thx,

RM

 


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