> The list goes on and is why there are consultants out there, right Joe ;)
Absolutely. Heck most of the questions on this list all get stamped with the initial response of "it depends". AD is a very variable type of thing. :o) As a general rule, when someone is building something though, I tell them to build as big as they can get away with. It is the rare case that you don't use all of it and more as companies tend to want whatever they have doing more and more and more. Much easier to get money up front than beg for it later when you didn't ask for enough. joe -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mulnick, Al Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 3:03 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Stress testing and performance analysis of domain controllers Depends on your environment. Since he's trying to "beef them up" already, then I don't think it's overkill to separate disk I/O streams. In less change prone environments, I might settle for moving the log files only, and then add enough memory to make it interesting, but there're a lot of factors to consider. For example, since this is expected to be a highly-available piece of infrastructure (remember that identity, authentication, and authorization all rely on it being there when you need and speed is affected by it) I would have to say that I should design for the high-water mark. I DO NOT want to be caught with a machine that cannot handle the load if I have a lot of DC's and a slow network. The idea being that I put that DC there for a purpose. Often it's cheap to build it in a decent manner. HDD's are relatively cheap as are server class machines that can handle the extra disks. As an example, a DL380 from HPQ makes a nice DC in many environments. If I have a multiple domain architecture however, I may have to rethink this for the servers hosting GC functionality. If I have anti-virus and HID services running, I may have to take those into account as well. Management overhead, etc. also plays a role in the sizing decision. The list goes on and is why there are consultants out there, right Joe ;) -Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ayers, Diane Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 2:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Stress testing and performance analysis of domain controllers Wouldn't this be dependent on the volume of changes that you see in your environment? With Exchange and its accompanying volume of changes, moving the log files to separate spindles is as you say, a no no-brainer. However in our AD environment, we see very low volume of changes. We get maybe 50 MB of log files a day at most.. Our server design for our Win2K AD deployment was to design a DC like an Exchange server with oddles of disks and separate spindle sets for the OS, DB and logs but we found that this layout was a major overkill. For our Win2K3 upgrades to our domain controllers, we are using less dsiks and combining the OS and log spindles. We are still beefing up the memory and processors which in our environment seem to be the most critical components. Our DIT is ~1 GB. Diane -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gil Kirkpatrick Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 10:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Stress testing and performance analysis of domain controllers Definitely, putting DIT and logs on separate spindles is a no-brainer and guaranteed to improve things. Gil "I agree with everything Al has ever said" Kirkpatrick CTO, NetPro -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mulnick, Al Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 10:54 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Stress testing and performance analysis of domain controllers I think you can get what you want using the below tool in conjunction with http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4814fe3f-92ce-4 871- b8a4-99f98b3f4338&DisplayLang=en Using the /3gb switch is often recommended, but your biggest benefit will likely come from the disk layout. If you can get both, that's great, but the disk would be the one to really fight for if something has to give. That said, it's rumored that 64bit Windows does a nice job as well. I couldn't speak that however. Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Singler Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 12:04 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Stress testing and performance analysis of domain controllers maybe the Server Performance Advisor? : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61a41d78-e4aa-4 7b9- 901b-cf85da075a73&displaylang=en or http://tinyurl.com/46wd3 hth, john Ruston, Neil wrote: > > > As part of a more general AD design refresh, I am re-visiting the DC > hardware and OS configuration. > > I am proposing several changes to the DC spec, including the adoption > of the following: > > * Use 4Gb RAM > * Use /3gb switch > * Place AD logs and database on separate disk spindles > > In order to 'sell' this idea, I would like to demonstrate the > effective increase in 'horse power' that the above offers. I am > therefore looking for a tool which can help me to show that a DC with > config A can handle load x whilst DC spec B can handle load y. > > Ideally, this tool will act much like loadsim and simulate a load on > the DC so as to identify the maximum load that each config is capable > of handling. > > Is there such a tool available on the market? > > Thanks in advance, > Neil 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/
