For production, never less than two. The max depends on your usage and your WAN configuration and network stability.
If you have heavy usage due to apps like Exchange, you *may* need a couple of more. I think the calculation is one GC CPU per 2 Exchange CPUs or something like that? Though I am never a huge fan of just paper guessing, it may work for 80% of the places and you have one that doesn't fit that model. They don't know what else you are doing. If you have a WAN configuration with network connectivity that can drop (i.e. isn't guaranteed 100%) and you care about whether they work in a dropped state then you will need at least one per isolated location. If you have a single domain, make all DCs GCs. joe -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Maple Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 6:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ActiveDir] how many domain controllers ? Does anyone have a view about how many servers in a domain should be domain controllers. Should it be all of them - or only a few on each site ? Mike. List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
