Exchange and Domain Controller

You can install Exchange 2K on AD. You can even install ISA on top of that, but it is against best practice.

There can be a lot of problems with communication between services, security issues, restore issues, reliability issues, etc?

Regards, Mike

A search of tne microsoft knowledge base would reveal that Exchange 2000 should not be on a Domain controller for reasons of security and performance, however there is no "in stone" rule that says you can't do it, it is possible. Just a couple key points to keep in mind, administrators of the Exchange Server will automatically become administrators of all Domain controllers in the domain, and anyone that uses the web connector will need the right to logon locally to the server which is something you normally dont want on a domain controller.Also, performance of both you DC and Exchange system are going to be pretty poor. I found the following page that gives detailed information on how to install exchange 2000 on a DC, however I havent yethad time to test this for myself so I would suggest doing this in a test environment first. Good Luck!!
http://www.wrconsulting.com/Software/Publications/Exchange2/Install/Install.htm

This all depends on the number of users you are going to have.

The Microsoft Product Small Business Server has the Domain Controller and Exchange all on one box. It does not allow them to be split to separate boxes.

But it can only support up to 50 users total.

I have servers when there are less than 40 users total and Exchange is on the DC. Of course that DC is is fast and has plenty of ram.

I am having around 150 users. I had installed exchange 2000 in the domain controller which is also a GC server. I have found no problem in performance as well as security. Though the best practice is not to install E2K in DC, but you can do it if investing huge amount on servers is a constraint.

We at first did have a problem with this. We had a dual 800Mhz PC with 500 Megs of RAM and a 40 gigabyte hard drive. What happened is that our windows registry would become corrupt over a period of a few days. The solution we came up with was to buy a bigger and better server. Now we have an HP LC 2000 NetServer with dual 1Ghz processors 1 gigabyte of RAM and two 40-gigabyte hard drives that mirror each other. We then installed Win 2K Server then Exchange 2K on the server and have had no problems since. So my recommendation is if your going to install your Exchange Server on your Domain controller be sure your server harware can handle it.

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