New domain controller

Felix · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:15

Is it still recommended to put the log files and swap files on seperate drives to the main windows installation?

m4cc45 · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:30

Ideally that way you can normally salvage something if it goes horribly wrong.

M.

bods · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:32

It is. But in the days now when we role out DCs on VMware.... I do wonder why?

m4cc45 · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:37

Depends how you back them up whether they are snapshott'd, etc.

Even if it's a VM you have to have some kind of way to get it back if it falls down. Having files on different drives can be a saviour at times.

M.

LizardKing · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:52

bods said:
It is. But in the days now when we role out DCs on VMware.... I do wonder why?

Assign a different vmdk for each virtual hard drive.
That way the Virtual drives will still be accessible if the VM OS dies

However it depends on what the DC does and if you need a decent disaster recovery and on what timescale.

Felix · 23 Nov 2009 at 14:01

I looked at virtualising them a few months back but decided against it as all these servers are only for DCs. The OS will be on a RAID1, logs on a single drive and swap file on another single drive.

bods · 23 Nov 2009 at 15:06

the_chicco said:
I simply don't bother anymore. All the DC's sit on VMware, we do traditional backups, Active Directory state, VM backups and I also snapmirror the LUN's to another location every 30 mins. If a DC was to go I'd simply demote it, roll out a VM template, dcpromo and re-add it back into the forest.

This is the approach we take. AD is a replicated DB and we have such a number of DCs they are expendable at the end of the day *depending on the FSMO placement*...

RSR · 24 Nov 2009 at 15:35

the_chicco said:
I simply don't bother anymore. All the DC's sit on VMware, we do traditional backups, Active Directory state, VM backups and I also snapmirror the LUN's to another location every 30 mins. If a DC was to go I'd simply demote it, roll out a VM template, dcpromo and re-add it back into the forest.

This is pretty much the same as what i do. However, i do still have one phyical DC as its personal preference.

a1ex2001 · 25 Nov 2009 at 14:59

bods said:
This is the approach we take. AD is a replicated DB and we have such a number of DCs they are expendable at the end of the day *depending on the FSMO placement*...

FSMO roles are irrelevant to as long as you know where they are. If we lost the DC that holds all the roles in a domain I still wouldn't restore it, I'd seize the roles too a different DC clean up AD to remove the dead DC rebuild it and DCPROMO from fresh.

andyd said:
This is pretty much the same as what i do. However, i do still have one phyical DC as its personal preference.

I'm still in the one physical DC school of thinking, I like to know that even if VMWARE or the SAN went then I still have AD up and running without worries. Still use physical DC's at remote offices but they tend to be multi role file/print etc where it isn't cost effective or necessary to have a virtual environment.