Help me design this network.

BoomAM · 11 Oct 2007 at 11:27

Hi.
Im currently trying to come up with direction ideas for the network here.

It currenty has a DC that also does DHCP/DNS/File/Print, and an ISA.

I was gonna have everything virtualised on a 'super server'. But im considering a different route.
Im considering having:
2x Domain Controller (redundancy)
DNS/DHCP Server
File Server
Print Server/Application Deploy Server

Any suggestions/advice?

#Chri5# · 11 Oct 2007 at 11:47

Whats your budget?

DC implies a server is running DNS, so let them run DHCP as well and ditch the DNS/DHCP box.

How many printers do you have to need a dedicated print server?

sidethink · 11 Oct 2007 at 11:52

Unless you have tonnes of spare hardware around that needs using (or just want to do it) I'd go for something like this:

2x DC's (both with DNS and WINS - one configured for DHCP also)
1x File/Print Server (but try direct IP printing if possible)
1x Application Deployment and WSUS server (for updates)

I assume you are also getting rid of the ISA server somehow?

DNS and DHCP dont produce much overhead in most network environments. You could collapse this down to three servers consolidating the File/Print and App/WSUS servers since they are very bursty in their usage.

BoomAM · 11 Oct 2007 at 12:28

sidethink said:
I assume you are also getting rid of the ISA server somehow?

Yes, web filtering for our network will be taken over by our FrogServer sometime in the next few months. Leaving our existing ISA free for other uses.

#Chri5# said:
Whats your budget?

None at the moment. Its just in the planning phase. Although ive been working at a price point of about £15k+licences for the virtual server idea.

How many printers do you have to need a dedicated print server?

About 30. Makes our current DC slow down at times.

Ive been thinking of changing the config to the following:

- Two new servers, small HDD capacity(73Gb x2 Mirrored), 4Gb Ram.
Doing DC1/DC2 and DNS/DHCP on both.

- Two new servers, large HDD capacity (2Tb, 2x RAID 5 arrays), 2Gb ram.
One as primary storage for network, second as off site backup.

And then use the two existing servers as the WSUS/Print/App Servers.
Of which both are capable of doing in their current HW state.

That would mean, 4 new servers to buy.
Specing up, the DCs would come to £1500 each, and the File Servers, about £4600.
Making it a total of £12,200.

sidethink · 11 Oct 2007 at 13:24

Sounds like you're on the right track to me. One thing I've got into the habit of doing if there is a little spare budget is buying a spare hard disk and spare PSU/fans if possible.

We run HP DL360s mostly and I have at least one of each type/spec of hard disk and a few PSUs handy as well as some spares scrounged from HP engineers.

There are 56 servers in the building I'm currently working on and ten hard disks have failed in just over 12 months. All were built using RAID1 so there was no immediate issue - having a spare spindle lying around just mean't that redundancy wasn't affected for long either.

In the past I've been a big user of IBM iron but on the whole I can't fault the HP stuff - I'm quite happy to replace faulting hard disks if thats all that ever goes wrong with them.

BoomAM · 12 Oct 2007 at 00:09

What are Dell like now?
We get some pretty big discounts for gear we order off them.

mrbios · 12 Oct 2007 at 08:18

how many client machines are there on the network?

we've got about 500pcs on ours and because of the size of the grounds we run local DCs to each area (between 50-80 clients per DC, 8 secondary DCs, 1 primary DC in the central server room) depends what the network serves though i suppose?

each local DC also runs the printers in that area, all map via logon scripts

my personal opinion of dell are "stay the hell away", but then ive had nothing but bad experiances with there servers (albeit quite old servers), HP are my faves for both switches and servers at the moment

sidethink · 12 Oct 2007 at 12:23

Dell is fine if you have Gold support 24/7, in my experience you will need it.

HP and IBM iron just work more often in my experience. A good HP dealer will try his best to price match Dell if you can strike up a good relationship.

axer · 12 Oct 2007 at 12:34

BoomAM said:
What are Dell like now?
We get some pretty big discounts for gear we order off them.

Dell is fine!

We have some 700 dell workstations and 12 PE 2800's.

Other than HDD's dieing, we have no issues

BoomAM · 12 Oct 2007 at 12:38

mrbios said:
how many client machines are there on the network?

Theres around 200 machines, 700 users. Usually all getting hammered at the same time.

my personal opinion of dell are "stay the hell away", but then ive had nothing but bad experiances with there servers (albeit quite old servers), HP are my faves for both switches and servers at the moment

All the switches we have here, by my choice, are HP ones. And the existing servers are as well.

sidethink said:
Dell is fine if you have Gold support 24/7, in my experience you will need it.

HP and IBM iron just work more often in my experience. A good HP dealer will try his best to price match Dell if you can strike up a good relationship.

The problem im having is that the HP stuff, its hard to do a Dell, and spec it up myself on a website, give it to a supplier and say 'get this for me'. As everytime the suppliers 'expert he knows' specs something slightly different because they cant get the parts. Which annoys me somewhat.

tbz_ck · 12 Oct 2007 at 13:20

BoomAM said:
Hi.
Im currently trying to come up with direction ideas for the network here.

It currenty has a DC that also does DHCP/DNS/File/Print, and an ISA.

I was gonna have everything virtualised on a 'super server'. But im considering a different route.
Im considering having:
2x Domain Controller (redundancy)
DNS/DHCP Server
File Server
Print Server/Application Deploy Server

Any suggestions/advice?

Have both domain controllers run DHCP/WINS/DNS too. Seperate out DHCP so that each server manages different IP address ranges. That way if one DHCP server goes down at least the other is capable of handing out addreses in the meantime. Allow WINS replication between the two. Do DNS replication within the context of Active Directory so you can tighten security.

File and Print can go on one box IMO and Windows 2003 R2 is ideal for that since it has better print server management capabilities. If you JUST do file and print on that server and don't want to install anything else then you can save a few quid by getting Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 instead.

We have 8 servers here and next year I'm going to upgrade all hardware and go virtualised.

BoomAM · 12 Oct 2007 at 15:24

tbz_ck said:
Have both domain controllers run DHCP/WINS/DNS too. Seperate out DHCP so that each server manages different IP address ranges. That way if one DHCP server goes down at least the other is capable of handing out addreses in the meantime. Allow WINS replication between the two. Do DNS replication within the context of Active Directory so you can tighten security.

See below:

Ive been thinking of changing the config to the following:

- Two new servers, small HDD capacity(73Gb x2 Mirrored), 4Gb Ram.
Doing DC1/DC2 and DNS/DHCP on both.

- Two new servers, large HDD capacity (2Tb, 2x RAID 5 arrays), 2Gb ram.
One as primary storage for network, second as off site backup.

And then use the two existing servers as the WSUS/Print/App Servers.
Of which both are capable of doing in their current HW state.

Ive been thinking, that it might be worth my using the extra few £ 'spare' on the second file server to give it more than 2Tb of storage. Then it'll allow me to archive even more backups.
I want to get rid of tape usage completely.
Considering getting fibre cards for the two file servers as well, and giving them fibrelinks to the main switch, where the two DCs, WSUS & FrogServer will be located.

I can use one of the old servers for WSUS/Print/App Deployment Storage, and combine the second one with the lone server on our other network to beef its specs up a bit and provide some redundancy to that network as well.

We have 8 servers here and next year I'm going to upgrade all hardware and go virtualised.

What sort of HW are you planning for virtualising? Just the one server running several VMs, or multiple servers?

sidethink · 14 Oct 2007 at 11:12

BoomAM said:
The problem im having is that the HP stuff, its hard to do a Dell, and spec it up myself on a website, give it to a supplier and say 'get this for me'. As everytime the suppliers 'expert he knows' specs something slightly different because they cant get the parts. Which annoys me somewhat.

I agree that the self service side of IBM and HP's websites are poor but I find that the right vendor partner will sort this. It might be worth trying a different partner.