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Should a 2K print server also be a DC

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6 replies

by plexer 2 views

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Being a school we can't afford loads of servers to do different tasks but at the moment the PDC of our active directory domain holds all the user accounts and data.

If I add another server to just act as a print server should this also be a DC or just a member server?

6 replies

by ojt

A member server will do just fine. If you install it as a DC,though, you gain redundancy in that your users will be able to log on even if one of the servers are down, but you put more load on the print server because it will have one more job to do. You'll have to consider the number of users, number and size of print jobs and so on to choose between the two options.

by ojt

Just start with a combined DC/print server, if things seems slow you can run "dcpromo" to demote it to a member server again.

Good luck!

by plexer

That sounds like what I was thinking. DC redundancy being important to us as well but can't afford lots of servers.

by hitchcock4

I would say that it depends on the power of the server you are using. Certainly you can make a simple member server into a print server.

But if the server is a modern machine with 512MB (or 1024MB) of memory, then I would also make it a DC for redundancy.

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