Hi Danny, I also agree that using not state-of-the-art hardware is better than missing redundancy.
I've done multiple lag-site dcs virtualized on one physical hardware, used clients or virtual machines for domain migrations as the update server, and would also recommend to use better older hardware for an additional DC than just using a single DC. It's always the game of defining how much money to spend to get what level of redundancy. Is it likely that you have a AD failure _and_ the old hardware decides to pay the dept of nature? What I'd make sure: - primarily keep the users on the better hardware using the SRV-Record priorities - define how long it'll take you to fix the better DC in case of an failure - evaluate how many users need to be supported working in the office (-holidays, mobile users,...) - make sure that the old hardware is able to support those users for the time defined above, if not look if you are able to get more DC or upgrade something e.g. RAM until the hardware would be able to support your business Bottom point - you don't want the old hardware failing b/c of being badly scaled and that it'll only fail if the primary DC is going down. My 0,02€ Ulf |-----Original Message----- |From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Danny |Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 12:50 AM |To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org |Subject: [ActiveDir] Improving your AD's fault tolerance with |old hardware? | |Correct me if I am wrong, but assuming the more DC's you have |in your forest, the more fault tolerant your Active Directory |will become, is it therefore worth it to use retired, possibly |out of (hardware) warranty servers or workstations for this |purpose if you are budget-less (to purchase new servers)? In |this case, I am referring to orgs with 20-200 AD users. | |How about GC's and other related AD roles and critical |software based services? Same deal? | |Thank you, | |...D |List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx |List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx |List archive: |http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ | List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
