DC/Exchange/SQL on the same server

Personally I would have either purchased 2 cheaper servers or gone virtual.

Not recommended but I'm sure it would work fine and you certainly wont be the only person running that setup. I would also look at how much the business would be affected if you ran into problems and the server was unavailable.
 
ESXi is not all its hyped up to be, especially as far as SQL Server and Exchange are concerned, mainly because both are pretty hard core on random IO.

SQL just does NOT run well on VMWare, this is a fact - sure it might be ok for a DEV SQL box but not for production, if however BOTH are very light use you might be ok but personally I would lump it all on one baremetal OS install (your server, 2xQuad Cores?).

If you really want to virtualise the box use XenServer not VMWare because its far far quicker all round, I know this because I use both on many systems (the last being a 3 node XenServer pool - 2xDell R710's with 32GB RAM and a R910 with 32GB RAM connected to a SAN, XenMotion is free and works real well here).

I would never lump Exchange, SQL and AD on the same box though (baremetal), thats insanity and a recipe for disaster.
 
ThorpedoUK said:
ESXi is not all its hyped up to be, especially as far as SQL Server and Exchange are concerned, mainly because both are pretty hard core on random IO.

SQL just does NOT run well on VMWare, this is a fact - sure it might be ok for a DEV SQL box but not for production, if however BOTH are very light use you might be ok but personally I would lump it all on one baremetal OS install (your server, 2xQuad Cores?).

If you really want to virtualise the box use XenServer not VMWare because its far far quicker all round, I know this because I use both on many systems (the last being a 3 node XenServer pool - 2xDell R710's with 32GB RAM and a R910 with 32GB RAM connected to a SAN, XenMotion is free and works real well here).

I would never lump Exchange, SQL and AD on the same box though (baremetal), thats insanity and a recipe for disaster.
Click to expand...

Ignore this post, unless you pretty much reverse everything they said. If your going to consider virtualisation, vmware will always be at the top of the list for the best solution.

What ever you decide, split the load if nothing but for stability. Do you really want to have to take down email, sql and a DC for any maintenance all at the same time?
 
ThorpedoUK said:
ESXi is not all its hyped up to be, especially as far as SQL Server and Exchange are concerned, mainly because both are pretty hard core on random IO.

SQL just does NOT run well on VMWare, this is a fact - sure it might be ok for a DEV SQL box but not for production, if however BOTH are very light use you might be ok but personally I would lump it all on one baremetal OS install (your server, 2xQuad Cores?).

If you really want to virtualise the box use XenServer not VMWare because its far far quicker all round, I know this because I use both on many systems (the last being a 3 node XenServer pool - 2xDell R710's with 32GB RAM and a R910 with 32GB RAM connected to a SAN, XenMotion is free and works real well here).

I would never lump Exchange, SQL and AD on the same box though (baremetal), thats insanity and a recipe for disaster.
Click to expand...

For a second there I hoped your post was written in 2008, then I realised it was 2010.

Nice bit of outdated advice there.
 
As others have said, it'll work but it's not recommended. Whilst our "primary" DC (i.e. the FSMO roles holder) is a dedicated box, our SQL box acts as a "secondary" without issues as we don't have another machine to dedicate to the task.

Virtualisation is the way to go, either with Hyper-V or VMWare. If you want a low-risk introduction to this then, if the server has already been configured as a DC, maybe just install the Hyper-V role and set up the Exchange and SQL servers as VMs hosted on the existing installation. If this goes well you can always virtualise the underlying OS itself at a later date. Even if you leave the underlying OS as it currently is, you're still entitled to run three VMs on top of it with your 2008 R2 Enterprise licence.

Biggest problem I can see with SQL is potential performance issues with virtual disks. If possible, get the data and log files installed on a pass-through disk or a separate SAN.
 
edscdk said:
Personally having installed servers for 90 / 100 companies, and having installed 100's of servers and also having supported windows since NT3.5...

I would would install it on the same server, jsut make sure you have plenty of memory... considering the price id make sure you ahve 4gb..

I say its ok to install because I have done it and because SBS also does it by default.

single role DC? thats fine in a large setup but for 20 users?

(assuming the load is not two high and the hardware is up to scratch)

worst case its too slow and you take it off....

if you install ESX you are adding another level of software to go wrong, and another software overhead on your hardware, and another software platform to support...

also with the esx you have to either buy another server or reinstall the server with esx and then reinstall your servers on top or try a P to V which means additional machines...
Click to expand...

This is bad advice.

SQL goes **** up and kills the server - DC and Exchange go down too.
Exchange goes **** up - DC and SQL down too.
Routine maintenance on exchange requires a few reboots - DC and SQL down.
... etc, etc.

If the server is fairly beefy, virtualise all three (VMWare or Hyper-V will be more than enough). When it comes to day to day stuff/ disaster recovery, you'll be VERY glad that you did so.

ESX/ Vmware is a dodle to configure and solid as a rock - far more so than MS products. I manage 7 phyical ESX's, with 60 odd virtualised servers across them. The only time the ESX boxes have been offline is when installing updates. No crashes, no problems.
 
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Sorry but I'm firmly in the "PLEASE don't do it!" crowd (as mentioned previously!)

Just because SBS does it, doesn't mean that you can/should do it with the 'full fat' products. Don't forget that there are SBS-specific wizards which are the only way to do things on a SBS box which you don't get on the full-fat products, and when things go wrong you won't be able to utilise the designed-for-SBS products for DR etc.

The 'standalone' DC can also be your primary DNS and DHCP servers on the network, so it's not as if being a DC is the only role it'll fulfil. Both Exchange and SQL Server like to use local user accounts for a significant amount of their admin and running services, which you don't get on a DC.

By all means put ESXi on the bare metal and create three new servers for their roles but please don't chuck them all on one Server 2008 install :(
 
As has been said there are many reasons not to do it. However I have HAD to do the same very recently simply because licensing costs were an issue.

We have a deployment of Windows SBS 2008, which by nature runs Exchange and AD. We also loaded on SQL 2008 as there is a business application which required it.

Our server is a single CPU Quad core Xeon with 12GB RAM soon to be 16GB.

Again I would have have much preferred to virtualise it all with VMware ESX (I would not use Hyper-V just out of personal preference and I believe VMWare have the virtualisation side done much better) however the end result was down to cost of licensing etc.

As long as you make your client aware of the risks with single Server (ie patches require reboots etc) then you shoudl be fine.

At the end of the day there is the perfect solution and then there is the most cost effective solution. Unless you have unlimited budget the 2 will never be the same.

Dan
 
Seriously, HyperV one of the roles if you must. I've had a similar set up to this years ago with Server 2003, EX2003 and SQL 2005. It blew up
 
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