Running cluster services on AD Domain controllers?

[KARR]

All,

Does anyone have any experience or stories good/bad on running MSCS on AD Domain Controllers?

The idea is:

DC1: (Primary Node)
DC2: (Failover Node)

Both of the servers in the 2 node cluster would be running AD thus giving me redundancy in AD as well as redundancy in file/print if the Primary fails.

Thoughts, ideas?

PS These are some hefty machines so performance degradation would be small:

Dual PIV 2.8GHz Xeon Procs
4GB Memory
SCSI Drives at 15K RPM (RAID 1 for system and RAID 10 for data)
and 2x Gigabit to the clients.

 

[GiaBetiu]

The DCs will work as two independent ones. AD is already a replicated database, reason why Microsoft didn't add resources used as cluster resources.
As about if it is good or not to have AD on them, the answer can vary. You have to see what will be the load on those servers.
Normally having an AD on them is a good thing since is reducing the dependency of the cluster to one server from the network (cluster service account being a domain account).
Actually there is even a small version of AD used just for clusters, named "domainlet" ( a standard AD but with replication and other few fetaures turned off via some registry settings).
Speaking again about load, you have to see what services you want to offer to your network. AD will bring utilization enough. Of course, it depends how many DCs you have, and how the roles are assigned who's Global Catalog, how the FSMO roles are divided).
Sumarizing:
- is good to have AD on them (cluster will not depend on a different servers from the network to start)
- if this will bring too much load, then keep them memebr servers or install on them a domainlet.


Gia Betiu
gia@almondeyes.net
Computer Eng. CNE 4, CNE 5, MCSE Win2K

http://www.almondeyes.net