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Server designs/setup/topology

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by mhamilton

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Well getting close to the no choice for the Win2k conversion. It is a chance to reconfigure a few things. Looking for suggestions/thoughts/problems found about combining servers for tasks. I work in a pro AS400 shop and every time we have to ad a new Intel box they complain. :) So a few arguments to help me out would be cool. Like how putting the file server and print server together would be good or bad??? Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks

Mike Hamilton

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by joseph moore

The answer you would probably expect is "well, it depends!" Not exactly helpful, but accurate.
It does depend on the expected load the merged servers will be under.
For example, I am in a 50 user office, and we run DHCP, WINS, 4 print queues AND the home directories ALL on the PDC!
(I did not set this up, so don't blame me! I realize the single point of failure this is, but this is how they did it here!)
But to be honest, a 500 MHZ PII with 512 MG RAM is handling the load. During the day, the processor utilization is low. True, at 9AM, it does spike some, but even then it is only in the 50% range.
So for this office, running all of these processes is ok.
Now, if we had hundreds of users, then there would be a problem.
But it does meet our needs, and works just fine.

So in regards to your question, it really does depend. How many printers do you want to set up on the machine? How many user home folders? I would think that a single server could handle a couple dozen printers and hundreds of home folders, but others here will have better real-world experience in this.
Do I suggest putting everything on one box like I have? NO!
Unless you have a small office, then you can get away with it.

hope this helps

by smmurphy

Mike,
My answer is going to be qualified as to the scale of your operation.
We have seven remote offices that we have used a 1 box file/print server set up. In these offices, we have an average of 35 users, and they run fine with spikes between 8-9 AM and 1-2 PM. The only time we have had any problems was in January when we were attempting to run and print year-end reports.
We tried this same set-up with an office of 125 users that was acquired in February and it failed miserably. (This office also used some very high end graphic intensive applications.)
As a recomendation, I would base the decision first on the number of users and printers involved, and then on the use requirements. From my limited experience, you would need to use separate servers once you exceed 75-100 depending on the resonse time expectations of the users.

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