Problem children

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

Yep, I’ve been away. I’ve got a few problem children at work. Two of them are computers.
Yes, that means some of the problem children are human. Actually, they’re coworkers. I won’t get into that because if I do I’ll say a whole lot of things I’ll regret later.

I’ve got a problematic server that’s loaded down way too much–it’s the PDC and main file server for one of my clients. It’s also the DNS and the WINS server. And the print server. I know, I know. You don’t mix domain controllers and WINS. I didn’t set it up. I also know you don’t mix PDCs and file or print services. Like I said, I didn’t set it up. It’s been crashing and giving odd problems a lot lately. I’d like to bring up a BDC, promote it, then shut this machine down and bring up a file/print server by the same name and restore the shares from backup. If next week goes like this week did, I’ll probably be asked to do that.

I’ve also got an NT box running a really old version of Oracle. It’s crashed more today than it has in the previous three years. Right now my job is to put band-aids on it, and hope it makes it through the night.

So that’s why I haven’t been writing.

If you found this post informative or helpful, please share it!

4 thoughts on “Problem children

  • September 6, 2002 at 11:27 am
    Permalink

    Where can you get good info about what services to run on what servers in linux? I have set up a web/email server and a seperate PDC(samba-tng), also running wins support and providing file sharing for the network. Is this incorrect? Should PDC be on a seperate server from file sharing/wins? Can it be on the same machine as the web/email server? What are the min requirements for a PDC? I have a 486dx2 sitting around I was going to use for a router, is this sufficient?

    Thanks

  • September 8, 2002 at 4:42 pm
    Permalink

    On NT, your domain controllers shouldn’t run WINS since those services are in demand at the same time. Put both on the same server on a large network, and that machine’s going to get hammered.

    On small networks, you don’t have much choice, basically everything needs to run on one server because you probably only have one server. In a home or small office, that’s fine.

    Pretty much the same rules apply to Linux. If you have multiple machines available, put file services and WINS on one machine, and make the less powerful machine the domain controller. A Pentium-class machine is sufficient for domain controller duties.

    As far as where to find good info… I’ve been looking. Experience has been the best teacher for me.

    For routing, a DX2 is usually sufficient. Routing on a cable or DSL line isn’t terribly demanding.

  • September 8, 2002 at 4:49 pm
    Permalink

    To answer your other question, if you’re talking about a small network here (less than 25 people on it), I’d leave things set up the way they are. If the Web and mail server isn’t very busy, you might increase performance on login slightly by moving domain controller duties over to that machine, but you won’t save enough time to make the work worth the effort.

    Now if you have 300 people logging in, like the client with the troublesome PDC/file/print/WINS server, then yes, it makes a difference and you need to spread the servers’ work around a bit more.

  • September 9, 2002 at 7:54 am
    Permalink

    Thanks for the info.

Comments are closed.