We want to setup a "small" server for on of our offices (8 Client Computers, local Domain not linked). We need to have an Exchange Server. Unfortunately we cannot use SBS since its support is running out.  We already do have a Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Licence and an Exchange Server 2013 Licence (+CALs).  As Exchange does not run on Essentials (thanks Microsoft for that!) we need to run a Standard Licence.  My Setup would be the following:   Host Machine Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard with Hyper-V on it 1 Virtual Machine Running Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard + Exchange Server 1 Virtual Machine Running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials (Domain Controller)   As Microsoft does not recommend running the domain controller on the same instance as the Exchange Server and we do have less than 25 Clients i would go for that setup. Seems a bit over complicated but as far as i understand it follows Microsoft's recommendations.  Do you have any recommendations concerning the hardware? Right now we have a Lenovo RD340 equipped with 8GB RAM, 1 SSD 128GB and 3*3TB HD in Raid 5. Maybe we should upgrade it to 16GB RAM, but as the Hyper-V can manage the required memory it could be enough right now. Where should we install the Guest VMs? On the SSD?
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This is a  about  Related:      I have a question regarding capacity planning. Can the Server Fault community please help with the following:   What kind of server do I need to handle some number of users? How many users can a server with some specifications handle? Will some server configuration be fast enough for my use case? I'm building a social networking site: what kind of hardware do I need? How much bandwidth do I need for some project? How much bandwidth will some number of users use in some application?
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I am planning to deploy an Active Directory and Domain Controller on AWS for my company. It will primarily be used for these:   User Authorization (Login/Logoff Process) File Sharing / Management (Employee can share files with eachother) Deploying GPO (To enforce some IT policy i.e. USB Access, etc).   In addition to that, the Server will be acting as Sharepoint Server as well (that means it will need SQL and IIS).  What i am asking is.... [Please see edit]?  If it is a physical server, what i would do is:   Buy the PC server. Install Windows Server (if it is not already there). Configure DHCP/DNS (and all other networking stuff). Install and Configure Domain Controller. Install and Configure Active Directory. Configure and Enforce GPO as needed.   And i will be doing all those stuff mentioned from above either from the physical machine or from remote connection.  PS: Yes i am aware of the implication of losing access to the Domain Controller (i.e Network outage). One way to mitigate this is by deploying a local cache storage on premise i suppose.  EDIT I really need AD/DC to manage logins, organizational hierarchy and policy (GPO). This seems to be the reverse of most server setup. I'd like to use a cloud based service to act as the primary Domain controller and in the future, also to provide local authentication to manage print/file service (if this is possible).  But i'd really like to know if it is possible? More importantly is it a good practice?  I don't mind using either Amazon or Azure.
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I get we have two options while connecting to remote SQL Servers or other domains with Windows authentication:   runas /netonly method   adding windows credentials     But doesn't Windows authentication mean that the user who logged in to Windows has authentication to use SQL Server?   So since I am not an authorized login or user in remote servers, I mean I am not a Windows user on their machine, how could I connect to their servers?   So everyone who knows my domain name and instance name can connect to my machine.   What about security? Do we have to add other Windows users or machines to connect to our SQL Server?  I believe we must add other machines to our domain or we must add other domains as trusted to our domain.  Please help; what is the point I missed?
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I was wondering if anyone had any specific experience using Intel DC3700 SSDs (or similar) in the HP (DL380p) Gen8 servers?   I'm upgrading a set of database servers that use direct-attached storage. Typically, we use HP-branded everything in our server configs, and beyond a few SSD'd desktops (all of which have worked flawlessly), I have not otherwise used SSDs - certainly not in a server.   The servers we're upgrading run SQL Server (2005) on Windows. We're moving to SQL 2012. Current boxes host a single 200GB database on DL370 G6 provisioned with 72GB 15K SFF drives in RAID 1+0 as follows: OS (2 spindles), tempdb (4 spindles), t-logs (8 spindles), data (20 spindles). Performance is not an issue (CPU load is typically 20% / peak 30%, disk queues are typ = 1). The data volume disks are running in MSA50s off a P800 - so there's probably 5K IOPS there tops. The hardware is approaching 4 years old, and so it's time for a refresh.  Data usage, as reported by the individual hard disks, shows write volume of &lt; 100TB since deployment on the data volume; &lt; 10TB write on the transaction log volume; and ~ 1TB on tempdb.   That's the use case. Now consider a new, identical disk subsystem. It's going to run ~ $15K per server (34x 15K HDD @ $250 + 2x D2700 shelf + Smart array P421 for the external storage).   Consider a similar SSD deployment, say 6x 200GB SSD for the data volume, and 2 each (100GB) for OS, tempdb, and logging. Perhaps overkill, but using Intel DC S3700 for all with a second array card brings me in around $5K per server. Plus, it fits in one 2U box (use the expansion cage on the DL380p) and saves several hundred dollars in electricity every year. With the increased SSD performance, this might even cover some sloppy queries ;-).   An equivalent "no-worries" HP SSD solution is going to run ~ $10.5K. Twice the price with less warranty, lower endurance, but guaranteed performance and manageability.    Certainly, there are loads of in-between solutions that could work. I'm also quite aware of the vendor supported solution vs. 3rd party trade-offs. What I don't have is experience integrating these specific products to help quantify those trade-offs. I'm hoping someone out there does, and is willing to share his experience.   Questions that come to my mind are:  Does the S3700 play well in the Proliant environment with the Array P42x/P822 cards? If using the S3700, would there be an advantage to using a 3rd party card, say the LSI 9270-8i? How (well, easily) are firmware upgrades or management alerts accomplished with the third party solution as I've outlined?  If there are particular issues with the assembly, how have you worked around them - assuming you have?  With the changes that SSDs has introduced into the storage arena, storage solutions are way less straightforward than even a few years ago. I'm sure they will be very different in another few years, and we had expected to wait another cycle before seriously considering using SSDs in any server application.   Before I head too far down this road, is there anyone who would share their relevant experience with any of this? Please tell us why we're smart, crazy, or something in between.
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I'm looking to install 32-bit windows with IIS to dual-boot with my 64-bit edition of windows on a laptop. I have a ten gig partition on my harddrive - is this large enough for a simple Windows install and a few programs?   I've never dual booted before, so I'm not quite sure how easy it is to mess up the process. Can you recommend any tutorials on how to set up a dual-boot configuration on Windows?
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I have to a get a very simple data entry website up and running. This website will be accessed by only a few people at a time (at most), but usually only one person, and not very frequently - maybe a coupel hours at a time, not every day.  I really don't want to pay for hosting if I don't have to. I have AT&amp;T U-Verse Internet Service.   How feasible is it for me to setup a simple Windows/IIS website on my home network that can be accessed publicly? What's the minimum Internet speed I would need? How can make sure that the IP Address for the public website is static, so I can setup my DNS and forget about it?  Any additional thoughts or suggestions on this type of setup would be greatly appreciated. If this is not feasible, or easy, I will likely just go with a hosting service, and I already have one picked out, so I don't need any suggestions for this.
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We're about to install a memory intensive application and will purchase a server for it.  The server will have at least 4 CPUs, with multiple cores. While the application is memory intensive, the consultants we're speaking with said that 32GB should be sufficient.  They also said that if I add more memory than that, the server will slow down because of the "extra wiring" to connect all of the memory.  I'm not planning on putting VMs on the hardware so I don't need extra memory to partition for virtual machines.  However I am concerned that 32GB may not be enough.  Does the consultant's assertion that more memory than I need will slow the machine down correct?
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A potential customer wants to evaluate our storage system. They run Windows 2008R2 x64 with 4KB NTFS on a virtual test machine they've sent us. They did not seem to know this at hand, so I think it's reasonable to assume that environment was not tweaked. The tests are inserting, indexing, searching, deleting. Tool is not known to me.  Given that the windows NTFS block size is 4KB, and SQL write in 64KB chunks - is it safe to assume that a block size of 64k on the SAN is a good choice?  They run SQL Server 2008, perhaps standard.
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I have a Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain.  Yesterday, a computer’s (running Windows 10 Pro) network drive stopped working.  After further investigation (gpresult /h) it appears ALL group policy objects are failing with the reason Inaccessible, Empty, or Disabled.  I have confirmed that all the GPOs still exist and are enabled on both (redundant and local) domain controllers.  Furthermore, there are 20 other machines on the same domain and LAN with absolutely no problems.  However, there is one other computer that I tested which presented with the same problem!  Does that mean the problem is with the servers?  gpresult /r reports that one client is getting GPOs from local DC1, and the other from DC2.  So it is not a problem related to a specific DC.  gpupdate /force fixed nothing (though it claimed that policies were applied).   I tried deleting the registry entries for local policies (following this guide ) and rebooting - same problem.    I found this support page from Microsoft (), but it claims it only applies to Windows 7 or earlier clients.  All my machines (both server and client) are running 64-bit versions and are fully updated.  I have rebooted all of them just to be sure.
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From our license info page from MS:  Agreement Info: MOLP-Z Std ... License Date: 2011-03-02 Microsoft Invoice No: 91.... Reorder/Upgrade End Date: 2013-03-31  MS Win Pro 7 Sngl Open 1 License  Part no: FQC-02872 Qty: 120 MS Win Server CAL 2008 Sng Open 1 Part no: R18-02709 Qty: 120  Now we want to upgrade to Enteprise but the reseller says "Sorry, you need to buy new licenses, 120x Win7Pro (FQC-02872) and 120x SoftwareAssurance (FQC-02368).  Are they trying to rip us off?? "Upgrade End Date" still not here and why do we need to re-order exactly same part number (FQC-02872) only 1 year later?
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Taking a spin off of this question:  in a new direction for 2014.  Taking into account a basic Windows infrastructure:   domain controllers Exchange 2007/2010/2013 Sharepoint SQL File Servers / Print Servers AD Integrated DNS AD authenticated 3rd party devices (let's say 802.1X for networking and maybe some content-filtering, etc.) AD/LDAP authenticated "administrative" functions on IT apps/hardware/etc. perhaps some KMS stuff throw in a CA if you'd like home grown apps 3rd party in-house apps   Now, let's rip it all out and decide we are going to the cloud.  We've contracted to move Exchange/Sharepoint/File Services to Office 365.  SQL will now be hosted as well on  something like Azure.  We've gotten away from the need for AD-DNS and simply run everything via a simple Windows DNS server.  We still need 802.1X and would like SSO if possible to our various cloud apps.  Home grown and 3rd party in-house apps would likely stay, but have the ability to use internal user databases instead of AD authentication  The question is...do we really need Active Directory at all?  Or more to the point, AD on-premise or even hosted via Azure or similar (ADFS) or running ADDS on a hosted VM through Azure or similar.  Could/Should we look to something else like a 3rd party SSO option such as  or similar that can provide SSO functionality even if it is as simple as LastPass or similar for each user?  What kind of legitimate needs does AD fulfill if everything else in the cloud?  Could a MS-centric infrastructure get away with not having AD at all if they move everything that previously relied on AD to SaaS offerings that didn't rely on AD authentication?
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I'm kinda newbie in this Windows 2008 Server R2 configuration stuff, so I would appreciate any help regards the issue I'm facing.  After a Windows 2008 Server R2 clean install I created a couple of local user accounts and joined them to the administrators group, I tested them and I was able to log on with each one.  Then I installed Active Diectory role (DNS role implied) and runned DCPromo. The domain was created and promoted succesfully and I was able to log on into the domain from a client machine.  The issue began when I realized that I was no longer able to log on locally into the server (meaning LOCALMACHINE\localusername). I looked into domain user accounts and noticed that the local user accounts I created previously were now part of the domain. I consider a bad thing not being able to log on locally anymore, so in a shot to fix it I stopped the Active Directory service... my bad! Now I'm sort of locked up, I can't log either locally or as part of the domain.  Can someone please shed some light in this? What did I miss in the process? I tried googling but could find any straight forward solution or explanation. What concept I'm not catching?How can I promote a server to PDC and still be able to log on locally?  Thanks in advanced.
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If Always-On is configured, while applying Service Pack, should I:   Directly move SQL Server Instance (Secondary Replica) to make it passive and apply Service Pack  Or First move Availability Group and then move SQL Server Instance (Secondary Replica) and finally apply patch and restart the Server.   Can you please let me know?
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I need to install SQL Server MSDE 2000 SP4 on Windows 10.  I have other machines that run Windows 7 and 8.1 and SQL Server MSDE 2000 works fine (with merge replication configured too).  Now I testing the same scenario with Windows 10, but setup is closing unexpectedly during installation.  I know that this version is very old, but is there a workaround to install it on Windows 10?
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We have a small business and currently don't have a need for a domain within our office. We have a basic network and a single server running Windows Server 2008 R2 with some file shares and 3rd party apps.  We use Office 365 and have a Windows Azure subscription. The two seem to be keeping the Active Directory for our organisation in sync pretty well. (i.e. The data looks the same on both systems)  All of the thrid party apps we run on our app server support LDAP as an identity provider but because we don't run a domain we are having to get each user to create a new login/password for these services.  Ideally we'd like to get this server to sync from Azure/Office 365 and allow users to then authenticate using their Office365 credentials.  All of the literature I have found talks about synchronising FROM on-premise to Azure but we'd like to rather sync FROM Azure/Office 365 to our on premise server. I guess our on-premise server become a federated identity provider for our Office 365 directory...  Is this possible or do we need some 3rd party LDAP provider that can federate identities from Azure or Office 365?
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I'm trying to figure out how to share the internet connection from my HOST Azure VM to the VM's withing Hyper-V inside the HOST VM.  I've added two network interfaces to the HOST Azure VM each with static IP's configured.  Upon creating my Virtual Switch on Hyper-V i've associated the secondary NIC on the HOST machine and the internet connection is not passing through. I do have "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter" checked.  My intent is to create a Domain Controller with DHCP as a Hyper-V VM within my host machine and create subsequent Hyper-V VM's on the HOST machine for purposes of exchange, SQL, etc... But I need to get my primary Active Directory VM up and running and can't seem to figure out how to pass the internet connection from the HOST onto my first Hyper-V VM.  Any help, ideas, input appreciated.  Some context for this question: I'm investigating setting up a Hyper-V network for Microsoft Exchange. My plan is to create 1 Azure VM and install Hyper-V and multiple VM's inside for Active Directory, Exchange, DNS, DCHP to setup a public facing exchange server.
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We are running a SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation version. The client has decided they don't want to pay for full SQL Server standard and feel the Web edition is suitable. Can I downgrade SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation to Web Edition?  Obviously I need to put a licence on it. Can I just put the Web edition licence on it and it will become a Web Edition server or does it require a re-install.