Windows Domain Server, etc

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F1ydave

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Mar 9, 2014
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Ok, I have read many times that it is recommended to separate the domain controller services from the main server...can anyone tell me why? What are the pro's and con's?

On Esxi, running VM of server 2003, currently 1 server for everything (domain, file).
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Biggest reason is separation of functions for maintenance, service and upgrades. You want each function you offer to be independent so that it can be brought offline independently for any service (including MS "patch Tuesday" stuff). You want to be able to work on one thing at a time without impacting the others.

For example, you might want to upgrade your file server to Windows 10 early to take advantage of some nifty new feature (like Share Nothing Scale Out). But for some reason you might not be ready to upgrade your AD to Windows 10. If you run them both on the same instance of Windows Server you pretty much have to upgrade them together.

In general, for a home/lab server this is probably not a big deal as you are the only user and you can control your service/upgrade practices. The recommendation really has more to do with production environments.
 
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F1ydave

Member
Mar 9, 2014
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Ok thanks for clarifying that for me. Its been on the back of my mind for over a year.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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Plus you want to run 2 AD servers and not share roles, if you install anything on the drives of an AD server, caching is disabled! and roles like SQL server are uninstallable making the upgrade of the AD server impossible!
 

scobar

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Nov 24, 2013
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To be honest I would have a hard time falling into the hype of not multi-role-ing a an AD/DC in smaller environments. You need to realize your environment and purpose before going left-wing segregation on your servers. Windows SBS builds have been cooking in many features for a number of years(SQL/Exchange/IIS/WSUS/backup). Provided you can read Microsoft's best practices and apply some common sense, the box will do just fine. Where they fail is when people do not understand the hardware constraints and run them on slow disks and don't bother to configure them.