Upgrade advice? Can anyone tell me it is a bad idea?

[esmithbda]

We currently have a very small network (about 20 users/computers).

There are two servers, both Win2K.
The backup domain controller runs on a Dell PowerEdge PII with 256M RAM. It's only purpose beyond the BDC is that it runs our anti-virus software (Norton Corporate Edition 7.6), and it controls our Xerox Document Centre 432, which is a terrible beast.
That machine is blissfully stable and will stay up essentially until you tell it to reboot due to some patch that requires it.

Then there is the other server. This is the one that takes up nearly all of my time. It is a Dell PowerEdge PIII with 512M RAM. It is our file server, our Exchange 2K server, and our PDC. It also has our backup tape system (Veritas Backup Exec v9 with the Exchange plug-in, which is incredibly unstable on this setup and rarely works as a whole), and Exchange Anti-virus (Norton).
This machine chrashes nearly all of the time. Many people have looked at it and they have all come up with many reasons as to why it crashes. But the long and short of it is that it is doing too much all on one machine. You shouldn't have a PDC and Exchange on the same machine IMO.

Nearly all of the client machines are XP Pro (there are two that aren't, but they will be upgraded "soon&quot.

I have finally gotten approval to get a new machine, which for us is a nice one - P4 3Ghz (w/HT), two huge drives, and a gig of RAM.
This machine would be solely the Exchange machine and likely some file sharing as well - no PDC or BDC. The old Exchange machine would be our file sharing and PDC machine.

We have a MSDN subscription, so we have Win2K3, Exchange 2K3, and Outlook 2K3 at our disposal.

I'm normally of the opinion that if it isn't broken, don't fix it. No need to try to make something better and ruin it. But this system is currently not working at all and constantly crashing.

So now that we have this new machine, I am debating whether to go ahead and do Win2K, or to take the next step and put 2K3 Server and Exchange 2K3 on it.

I have heard many good reasons why to upgrade to Win2K3, but I am interested in hearing the nightmares. Reasons why not to upgrade, or caveats with certain senerios.

Then the next big question, should I upgrade the other two servers to Win2K3? What are the pros/cons in that? I am likely going to not upgrade them just because I don't want to break our software - but if the pros are large enough, I will consider it.

Reading on the MS site, it seems that it is the greatest thing in the world and I should upgrade everything - but MS is obviously not going to make a list of the negatives and hard parts in the switch - and that is what I need to know.

Thanks everyone.

 

[sabrinaduncan]

Get more than 1 GB of RAM. We are running 2003 now with 1 GB. The machine takes 10-11 minutes to shut down. That's with about 50 users.

You're right MS won't list negatives. My rule is to take whatever memory the say is required and multiply it by 4.

Plus, don't use Dell.

 

[esmithbda]

We have Dell machines now and they have been too annoying to upgrade and deal with (and they 100% deny any fault in their hardware, Veritas denies their backup software has any issues, and MS denies that they have any issues - but all together makes for a crashing machine).

As a result, this new machine is just one that we have a guy build for us - I would normally just do it myself, but it requires having connections for parts here that I don't have (at least not at reasonable prices).

Thanks for the tip - I will get in touch with him and tell him to up the RAM to 2 gigs.

 

[7139]

We're running 2003 Server/Exchange 2003 with Veritas on Dell serversperfectly fine. No problems installing or running whatsoever!

I would go for 3 GB of RAm though with the 3gb switch!

 

[esmithbda]

Well, the machine is already on its way with 2gigs in it, but since this isn't a Dell, I can't put memory in at any time on it and know full well what it takes.

I tried upgrading the RAM on one of our Dells on our own - it didn't like it and only beeped instead of booting. I figured it was because it wanted ECC - so I went out and got that - still didn't like it.

Also, assuming you mean the "/3GB" in the Boot.ini file? I recall that under Win2K, but I wasn't sure if that was still around on 2K3.
Technically - at least in terms of Exchange, I think you have to enable that on any machine with a gig of RAM or more and then presumably several gigs of free space of swap space on the server.
But it has been awhile since I looked that up - so I could be way off. I just remember thinking that it was odd that the 3gig switch actually had to be on at lower RAM levels.

 

[sabrinaduncan]

I don't know how easy it is to upgrade memory in Dells. Back in 2001, we had a Dell server that we got originally with only 256 MB. About six months later, we went back to Dell to get more memory. The system didn't recognize the memory they sent us.

 

[iggy0069]

First of all, I just want to say that I purchased a new Dell PowerEdge 2600 to house our Exchange 2K3 system. The existing PowerEdge 2600 we purchased in October for SQL and Great Plains works fine. Never any problems.

Second, MSDN subscriptions are strictly for testing environments (per the license agreement). Legally, if MSDN licenses are used on production machines, the company could get in BIG trouble. But then again, how often does Microsoft bust small companies?

Thirdly, I am about to migrate my network to W2K3 DCs, and Exchange 2K3 with a Front-End Back-End scenario. The biggest reason for us doing this is the RPC over HTTP connectivity that is offered with this set-up and Outlook 2K3 as the client. Huge plus for us. But definately something to look into. If you don't think you need it, then staying on a W2K domain should be fine.

 

[esmithbda]

iggy0069 - excellent point. We are just testing at this point and have licenses coming down the pipes. Thanks for pointing that out though

We are very interested in the Outlook 2003 client and what it can offer us, but I am too swamped with other things to get to that. Sometime later this year when we rebuild the old machine then we will likely consider going up to 2k3 for the DCs.

The current setup is still crashing (the new hardware isn't, but the old hardware is, and they aren't totally separate yet).
The users are moved over and working just fine. The issue we are having now is the public folder replication is behaving badly. It replicates successfully, but then throws up errors occasionally and then crashes (on the old hardware) - that said, the errors and the crashing don't seem to be related. Thankfully the event log doesn't have anything in it at all prior to the crashes and then afterwards they are very detailed about the startup.
Thank goodness for that - I would hate to have any clue at all as to why this machine likes to step out every 6-9 days. I much prefer being totally in the dark.

The replication won't let us remove the link to the old server due to permissions, even though we are at the highest admin level.
We ran the forest and domain prep beforehand.

We have done many searches and asked around to try to resolve this with no luck - the closest to help that we have had was from someone that said that they had heard from an MS person that it was "a bug" - yay.
I think we might have to eventually just break the server off and then have it be an orphan and hope the mail server doesn't spend too many resources caring about the orphan.

It is just me and then a consultant that comes in about 3 days out of the month trying to resolve this, and I have about 300 other things that are on the plate too. Thankfully the mailserver that is doing the brunt of the work does seem happy enough for now.

 

[xmsre]

It really comes down to system resources.

If you have more than 1GB of ram on Windows 2000, you should use the /3gb switch. On 2003 you should use /3gb with /userva=3030. The userva switch, new in 2003, allows you to better tune the resources that are allocated to applications. I like to go back on 2000 or 2003 and set system pages to 30,000 and heapdecommitfreeblockthreshold to 40,000.

The issue with the /3gb switch is, while it gives more overall RAM to applications, it severely limits system resources specifically Page Table Entries. PTEs are used by device drivers. File IO and backup operations typically consume PTEs. With the /3gb switch, you have somewhere like half of the PTEs available that you would have without it. If you look at the perfmon counter memory - free system page table entries, and that number is riding below 8000, then you need to do something. If it's below 4000, the memory manager starts scavanging PTEs from active applications which can cause severe performance degradation or even a bluescreen [stop 0x0000000d8 I believe].

If you still have issues after the memory optimizations, then its time to set gflags and use poolmon to determine which device driver is cunsuming excessive PTEs. Previous version of almost every AV software package have had this issue at one time or another, as well as Quota management software, backup agents, AFANT from the Openmangle, and a host of others. Periodic snapshots of resource usage by poolmon should be definitive enough to get action from the responsible vendor.