What is the limit for local user accounts on a member server?

[tdoma]

Hey group. I am trying to find out what the limit is for the number of local user accounts that can be created on a member server? Are there any licensing implications, for users for local user accounts? The licensing part is with the assumptions that the users already have CALS. If these same users already had CALs, would they need any additional licenses for connecting to a Win2k Web server?

Thank you advance for your help.

 

[svsawkar]

Well, if we are talking strictly local users accounts, they would be stored in the registry (SAM) and there would be around a 40,000+ user limit.

You need licenses to do the following:

Install the OS On the machine.
Connect and be authenticated by a server.

Connecting to a webserver (as an anonymous client) does not require a license.

/Siddharth

 

[SpotLizard]

Whilst Active Directory itself has a stated limit in excess of 40 million "objects", things are a little different when it comes to users and groups.

There is a 5,000 user limit per group in Win2K (this has been increased in 2K3 Server). The exception is the Users and Groups container itself which is not technically a group in the true sense of the word. There is a kind of 'workaround' for this and more info can be found here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ry/en-us/comsrv2k/htm/cs_gs_planning_dnbu.asp

Hope this helps.

SL

 

[svsawkar]

Just to clarify...

The 5k limit is for domain groups where replication is nececssary (and it's not always 5k). This is due to the size of the version store which utimately limits how much we can write to a page in one transaction.

This will not apply to your local group at all.

But then again, who really wants such a large group?

/Siddharth