For a 20 user SMB business, this is probably going to start costing a lot more than they would be comfortable with (multiple extra Windows Server 2003 licenses for starters)
As for comingling services - there's an increased risk involved. But for a 20 user business that may be what they need to accept (and have accepted). There is no strict technical reason why you can't have DC, Exchange and IIS running on the same box. SBS would be preferable, but if it's not in there yet then putting it in just because someone thinks something "might" become unstable isn't money I'd be willing to spend. Cheers Ken -----Original Message----- From: its.mike [mailto:its.m...@analogy.ca] Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2009 1:41 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: SMB question.. I bet some sort of virtualization would help - in my lab I run DC, Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL on separate virtual machines, hosted by a single 8G machine. The machines think they are isolated from one another (heh heh). In production we use multiple VMWare/ESX hosts. -----Original Message----- From: Phil Brutsche [mailto:p...@optimumdata.com] Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 5:18 pm To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SMB question.. >From an operations point of view, if that machine isn't SBS (Small Business Server) you're gonna find yourself in a world of hurt. Microsoft has technical documents explaining why Exchange shouldn't be mixed with your DC, with the only exception being SBS. Your guy who says that mixing all these services can lead to "issues" is probably thinking of that. If that web server is publicly accessible you've got yourself a whole other can of worms. The rule of thumb is that you should not EVER mix your publicly accessible services (web, email) with your authentication server. Note how I didn't use any MS-specific terms there - the same goes for Apache+NIS on any kind of UNIX-ish box. >From a "horsepower" POV the only thing in that list that might cause a problem is Exchange. Leaving that out I really doubt any of those machines is anywhere close to being maxed out. Cesare' A. Ramos wrote: > Hello all. > > We are having an internal tech discussion and wanted to have some > thoughts from others. The thoughts can be either opinion or reality. > > > We have a handful of small clients, less than 50 users (50 is an > average. The majority are under 20) that are currently running a > single server that is acting as AD, file, print, IIS, DHCP, Internal > DNS, and Exchange 2003 server on MS Windows 2003 standard server. > > From the books, I can agree that this may be pushing the hardware, if > not sized correctly. The servers are all running qty 2 dual core > processors, 4 to 8 GB of RAM, and over 500GB of available storage > with all running. > > The internal conversation / discussion that we are having is that a > single server cannot run all these items as it will lead to issues > and error in the server. One of the guys, states that he feels that > services such as server will become unstable. > > Is MS Windows SBS and option yet but not a reality.. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
