Win2k3 questions

[groovin]

hey networkers,

i have a several NT4 servers here and many Samba/Linux machines using a standard NT domain system. One of the NT servers is a stand alone server, that is just a domain member, doesnt provide any services like WINS, DNS, DHCP, etc... just SQL Server. Because NT is so old and not supported by MS, I'm finding it harder to find drivers and newer hardware that still supports NT. Sure, if I look hard enough, I can, but it's only getting more difficult. If I upgraded this NT machine to 2k3, can 2k3 participate as a stand alone server in an NT domain? I dont care to use AD or any of the fancy 2k3 stuff (yet), I just need to get a newer OS on this thing. The other NT machines may follow suit soon after.

Also, I am not sure how well Samba and win2k3 play together. Samba, as of v3 can participate in an AD domain, but cannot be a AD server. As I said, we will still use an NT style domain for a while, but if I do swtich all other NT servers to Win2k3, we might as well use AD.

any comments/advice appreciated!

 

[Genx87]

I would imagine as a stand alone server there shouldnt be a problem.

 

[Rilex]

Yep, no problems. The W2K3 box just cannot be a PDC emulator/Domain Controller.

 

[Smilin]

Yes it can be a member server in ANY domain.

I find a lot of older NT boxes are great candidates for converting to a virtual machine. Once installed on a virtual box you can upgrade hardware to your heart's content and only have to worry about drivers that work with the modern host OS that NT will be running under as a guest.

 

[Smilin]

hehe one thing...

Don't flip your 2k or 2k3 domain to Kerberos only authentication... NT can only go up to NTLMv2

 

[groovin]

thanks for the replies everyone.

smilin, yes consolidating NT boxes into virtual servers under vmware or something is a great idea! thanks for that tip

 

[Smilin]

Cool - Lemme take the opportunity to plug Virtual Server. The price tag alone drops the bomb on VMWare 😀

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Cool - Lemme take the opportunity to plug Virtual Server. The price tag alone drops the bomb on VMWare 😀

VMWare does beat it on features and is supposedly faster, but $600 for MSVS vs. $1700 for VMWare.... 🙂

 

[Rilex]

VS2005 is EXTREMELY slow compared to VMWare (and I only use VS2005 now because it is free via special licensing).

A month or two back in Microsoft's VS2005 usenet form, someone posted a comparison. I forget what the task was but it was hard drive intensive. It took 2 hours in VMWare and ~18 hours in VS2005.

If you're going to look at VS, at least wait until VS2005 R2 is released within the next month or two (should be by end of year at the latest).

EDIT: Here we go, worse than I posted above:

Subject: Results of performance test between VMware and Virtual Server 7/17/2005 5:56 AM PST

By: Joe@tna.com In: microsoft.public.virtualserver


I just completed an I/O performance test between VMware and Microsoft
Virtual Server.

Test platform:
- Dual Xeon 3.06 Ghz with 2Gb of RAM running Win2K3 Server.
- Physical drives: 80Gb boot disk, 120Gb data disk, 800Gb Raid-1 data
disk.

Virtual machines:
Windows 2000 SP4 - identical configuration running in both VMware GSX
Server and Virtual Server (they are Ghost images). They both had all
Virtual Machine Add-on's loaded.

Each test was run individually with identical parameters. The test
consisted of using Veritas Backup Exec to restore 80Gb of data from a
large, compressed "backup-to-disk" volume.

The source data was located on the 120Gb physical disk in an
expandable virtual drive. The data was restored to the 800Gb Raid-1
physical disk into a 250Gb expandable virtual drive.

Time to complete this job on a real server took an average of 1 hour
and 15 minutes.


Results (restore 80Gb of compressed data using Backup Exec 9.1):

Microsoft Virtual Server - 28 hours and 34 minutes.

VMware GSX Server - 2 hours and 45 minutes.


Obviously, VMware totally blew away Virtual Server by a wide margin.

 

[Smilin]

VMWare 14x faster?? I question your results. No, actually I call bullshit. 28hours for 80GB what a f*ing crock.

I run 6-10 machines simultaneously on my 2nd workstation here at work and I would never stand for such performance.


*** Do you have VM additions installed on the 2000 box? ***

 

[Genx87]

Holy smokes at 28 hours I think plopping down the 600 bucks for a server 03 license + 5 cals and the money for the machine + backup exec may be worth it.

28 hours is a long azz time for 80 GBs.

 

[groovin]

vmware is fairly quick, but that wide of a margin in performance is hard to believe... not saying it might not be true on some systems, but i dont think itll be the case for everyone (as in simlin's case).

 

[Rilex]

Not my post, Smilin, so don't call "my bullshit" 😉

However, when Win2K3 Server takes ~2 days to install from an ISO on decent hardware (2.4 Xeon, 3.2GB RAM, RAID5 U320 drives), you can tell that VS2005 just kind of bites. Once you have the additions installed, it works better but I/O performance is NOT good.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: Rilex
Not my post, Smilin, so don't call "my bullshit" 😉

However, when Win2K3 Server takes ~2 days to install from an ISO on decent hardware (2.4 Xeon, 3.2GB RAM, RAID5 U320 drives), you can tell that VS2005 just kind of bites. Once you have the additions installed, it works better but I/O performance is NOT good.

Try VS2005SP1. A Windows 2003 server install doesn't take more than an hour. My current VS box is a lowly P4@3.0ghz with 2gig ram. It has a rather slow 3ware 7506 card for RAID 5 disk storage.

 

[Rilex]

I can't use SP1 in a production environment, the EULA forbids it and since SP1 has been cancelled, I'll just be upgrading to R2 by the end of the year (hopefully within the next month) anyways.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: Rilex
I can't use SP1 in a production environment, the EULA forbids it and since SP1 has been cancelled, I'll just be upgrading to R2 by the end of the year (hopefully within the next month) anyways.

True enough. I'm still running the beta of SP1... I couldn't stand the speed of VS2005 sans service pack.