Exchange 2000 and Terminal Services

You mention you are already using a Win2K server for "authentication." What are you authenticating? Without Active Directory (AD) installed, you do not have a Win2K domain, and thus no centralized user authentication.

What are you using Terminal Services for?

Possible issues with Exchange:
Exchange is very memory and processor intensive. By design, it will automatically use ALL memory and cpu cycles not being used by other processes, releasing resources as other processes need them.

With the informationyou have given it is impossible to say whether or not all the services can be run off the same server. Is it technically feasible? Yes. In reality, we need such information as server configuration (number of processors, amount of memory, expected user load, usage of Terminal Services (which mode - Remote Administration or Application Server; if application server mode, which applications are being hosted?)) to be able to give you anything close to a definitive answer.
By "authentication server," I'm assuming you are talking about a Domain Controller??

My suggestion is that unless you either have a very minimal user load, or you are using Terminal Services to host only very simple applications (Word, Excel), you should not place Exchange on a Terminal Services server.

If you give us some info on your organization, we can give you better answers.

First off, I am not in an environment with Exchange 2000 running, so I can't verify this from experience. (I do know that Lotus Domino CAN run on a Win2K box with TS installed and running, though!) But here is the info I can find on this setup.

Technet article "XADM: How to Rebuild a Site Replication Service Without a Backup (Q282061)" lists the following:

"You cannot run the Exchange System Manager remotely when you create a new SRS database. However, you can connect to the server with aTerminal Services session, which has all the required characteristics of a local console session."

So, that says that yes, you can run TS on an Exchange 2000 server.

Article "XCON: MTA System Monitor Counters Do Not Work When You Connect Using Terminal Services (Q286825)" says:

"SYMPTOMS
Message transfer agent (MTA) instances may not be displayed in System Monitor on a Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer that is a Terminal Services client.

CAUSE
This issue can occur if theSystem Monitor counter for the Exchange 2000 MTA is not shared with Terminal Services.

RESOLUTION
To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server"

As it was answered before in this article YES it is possible but I wouldn?t do it this way (I would walk away from the project if had landed on my desk). The main reasons are that I can?t guaranty best performance and reliability for the users on this kind of configuration.

In this server goes down your users won?t have access to their mail, they won?t be able to log on to their desktops and they won?t be able to do any work because TS will not be accessible and all just because one server is down.

I there will be no other DC (Domain Controllers) the restore will be almost impossible. And because there would be only one GC (Global Catalog) response times (logons, Exchange DC & GC queries) will most probably be very pore.

Regards, Mike

Q1. Exchange 2000 must be installed on DC. Using TS on the same box will degrade performance of this DC (maybe for 5 users for TS and very powerful box 2-4 CPUs with a lot of memory ? no problems). To use TS on DC isn?t secure, because you need to give users permission to log on locally and it is not recommended.

Q2.You can have the authentication server on DC with Exchange.

My advice ? if you have only two boxes:
Exchange on DC (with authentication server) ? 1st server,
TS on member server ? 2nd server.

I ran across a couple of Microsoft articles, Q150543 and Q224447, that indicate you may have an issue with TCP/IP port assignments.

Here are the links:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q150543

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q224447

Remove any spaces that may have snuck into the pasted URLs.

I have exactly that running. If I had it to do over again and had a bigger budget I would have definitely installed my Exchange 2000 server on a separate box. Why ?

1. Never mind the performance issues just think of the practical issues. You Terminal server users are dependant on that box running to run all of their TS apps. If you have to reboot ot shut down for maintenance you cut them off completely. I have found the less you have yto touch the TS box the better. If your E2K server is located on another box at least when you have to perform Exchange maint. you will only disrupt there mail and nothing else.

2. I noticed that somebody else stated Exchange had to be installed on a DC. That is not correct. Mine is not installed on a DC and it works just fine. Infact you do not want to install your Terminal server on a DC as this leads to security issues.

3. You do as far as I know have to have AD running to install Exchange 2000 so there you might have a problem.

Hope that helps.

Question 1: No, there are non functional issues doing this. Terminal services are integrated in the OS, Exchange extends the OS and there are NO conflicts: read the last part of the answer to make sure you are all right.

There are security issues. The users are given a loca access to the Exchange server it selves and by this.... Its not recommended. But yes it works.

Question 2: Yes, Yes and yes: You may very vell use the same box for Global Catalog and Exchange and have a connection running to a DC (GC or NON GC). The authentication will work as normal and it will publisg itselves as a DC on the network.

The main topic you neeed to address in you very compressed "layout" is DNS: Make sure you are entering a reverse zone for thesubnet you are dealing with. Also if you are planning for a second DC in a separate Subnet, remeber to make a subnet using sites & Services and let this new DC be "running this new site"

The only experience I have using the same box as Terminal Server and Exchange Server is that you cannot have Outlook and Exchange installed on the same box. (I'm assuming you are running a desktop service since you are going to use terminal services) The latest will break the first, meaning If you are installing OUtlook after yuo've installed Exchange you will break the Exchange install.

We installed terminal server application mode +exchange server 2000 on a domain controller.it worked fine until we updated the exchange service pack to 3 . than the users who log in the teminal server and open outlook get a dialog box prompt them toenter password.and when they enter it they recived error .and unless they were administrators they couldent use the outlook.
we tryed to fined out what changed and couldnt.
the premissions stayed the same .my point is that the combination of a domain controller + terminal server + exchange ,will couse problems.
we moved our exchange server to deferent server
and the problem solevd.

Although best practice would state that Exchange 2000/5.5 should run on its own server, having terminal services on their as an application server should not result in any major issues. You can also run Exchange 2000 as a domain controller but it is not a recommended practice. In a test environment, I have had all of the above services running but only extending those services out to about 20 users. Where you may run into issues is when you are adding patches. If a Terminal Services patch causes issues, not only will your TS server be down but so will your Exchange 2k server and a domain controller. Also, it is NOT recommended to run just a single domain controller. You should have at least 2 domain controllers (authentication servers) before putting a Windows 2000 Active Directory domain into production. This will allow you to have a fall back in the event that you lose a domain controller. Obviously, make sure to have some type of backup system in place to cover restoration of Exchange 2k, Exchange Mailboxes, Exchange info store, Systems States, Active Directory. Depending on the size of your environment, you will see a tremendous increase in processor/memory usage if all of these services are enabled on one server. You may also need a DHCP server, WINS, DNS....we are running a 200 user environment and have all of the services seperated (Exchange 2k, 2 Win2k DC's, etc. If you have any further questions, please contact me

chrisamcp@hotmail.com
Chris Arsenault, MCT

Better late than never, eh?

Q1: The general rule of thumb for Terminal Server is you should have 5-10 MB of RAM and 10 MB of drive space for every concurrent user you plan to have over and above that required for the OS.

Adding Exchange 2000adds a degree of difficulty.

Keep in mind, the Exchange 2k server does NOT have to be a Win2k domain controller. In fact, it is strongly recommended that you don't install Exchange 2k and AD on the same server. As for running Exchange and Term Server, that would depend on the number of users that are logged on to the Term Server. More users means slower performance.

Check out this article on Term Server capacities and scaling:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/win2kts/maintain/optimize/w2ktsscl.asp

Q2: Exchange2k does not offer any sort of authentication services. Active Directory forms the basis for your domain authentication. If you are running Term Server, your users will be required to enter a domain username and password to log onto the server.

Thank you all for your responses, I'll take them all into consideration, thanks. Jeff H.

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