Replacement/ second server

[amateuradmin]

Thanks in advance for input:

Currrently running an ML330 G3 as the (yikes) only domain controller in a 50 seat grade school education network.

Seeing as it's getting toward the end of its useful life, I want to put in another server as a backup DC and will eventually become the primary when the 330 dies of old age.

One vendor is suggesting an ML150 G6 as pretty much comparable to what I have now. This really isn't my area of expertise, so I'd like some of the experts to comment on whether this machine is generally similar in capabilities, speed, etc. to what I currently have - and if not - what would you buy to replace the 330?

The 330 has 2 2.8ghz processors, around 6 gb memory, and 2 either 72 or 146 gb scsi drives.

Not running any disk intensive stuff or terminal server apps to eliminate a few "it depends" from the answers.

Thanks again

[Michael A. McKenney]

You should have two domain controllers separate from your application member servers. they don't need much power, RAID 1 + spare drive, dual or quad core, 4GB of RAM, Windows server 64-bit. Nothing powerful. You can place DNS and DHCP on them. Then demote your application servers to member server status.

[Terry Hutchings]

The ML150 G6 would be able give you better performance than the 330 G3. The 150 G6 has, at a minimum, 1.86 Ghz Dual core CPU's. While that may seem like a downgrade from the 330 G3 (2.8 GHZ), you should actually have better performance as the memory was a bottleneck in the 330 G3. The G6 uses PC3 10600 memory and will provide more throughput. I doubt that the server will be taxed that much though if it's only job is as a domain controller.

As Michael indicates, I would recommend not depending on a single server as a domain controller as even a short outage can cause issues in your domain. Worst case scenario.....you may be able to install a desktop with a Windows server OS to be able to act as a secondary domain controller once the 330 G3 is decommissioned.

[David Claypool]

A more important consideration than performance is reliability, longevity and manageability, and even though a few hundred more, the 300 series has a longer duty cycle than the 100 series and has an iLO management processor rather than the lighter-weight LO-100.

[Michael A. McKenney]

I would use low end 300 series over a 100 series. You don't need much hardware for a AD/DNS server. I would get two of them and backup software that can handle the AD backup nightly.