Darkstar (.local.DigitalMapping.sk.ca)

This computer was the initial server in the network. At one time it took on all the services and was a test bed for everything. Right now, it's an AMD K6 380 MHz system with 192 MB of ram and voluptuous amounts of disk space. The K6 II 380 MHz is the maximum the motherboard will handle as I found out. It main purpose is file and print server, fax server (WinFAX), plus email server for DigitalMapping.sk.ca. The test role is Primary Active Directory (and the only) server for the local.DigitalMapping.sk.ca LAN.

Windows NT 4.0 and BackOffice

As I said, this system has been the test bed system. It started with a free copy of Windows NT BackOffice. Yeah, believe it or not. Well not exactly free, I had to purchase an enterprise edition of one of the development systems. I picked VisualBasic 5.0, but never opened the package. I was already using Borlands C++ or Delphi for most of my development. I wanted to see what VB was all about but ended up giving the package to a friend. But I digress.

The BO server got me started on IIS and FrontPage for web development. I started by installing the entire BO package on a 200 Pentium Pro. That chugged along for a while. When I seen I wasn't utilizing everything I cleaned it up and reinstalled it on the new AMD K6 II 300 system. I just installed the plain server and the Option Pac which included all the web stuff. I installed the EMWAC email server (freeware) to handle the email as NT doesn't have a simple POP3 server and exchange is overkill for Internet mail. I think the email server was installed before I upgraded. The only other service besides the obvious file and printing was WinFAX. I also turned on the RAS and could dialup from home. WinFAX and RAS actually worked fine together on the same line

I never tried the NT 4.0 server as a domain controller. I did setup a Linux box with Samba and used it as a domain controller. That worked just fine and got me enthused about Linux as a server.

Windows 2000 and Active Directory

This computer is kind of an upgrade to the limit, yet minimal system for what it's doing. I bought an AMD K6 II 500 MHz and another 128 MB of RAM (total 256 MB) when I updated to Windows 2000. The CPU was too fast for the motherboard so the kids got the 500, and I got their 380. I wasn't going to put out another couple of hundred buck for another 128MB for gainsbery so I compromised. I bought 64MB for darkstar and took the 128MB for gainsbery. So darkstar struggles on with 192MB to run Active Directory. It was doing a lot of swapping until I got the web pages switched to gainsbery and turned off the web server.

The real problem I think is the Indexing server. I requires great gobs of memory depending on the number of files. On this particular system (a file server), that number is 170,000+ so I shut down the Indexing server.

The upgrade to Windows 2000 was to test the Active Directory (AD). I had the problem of using a domain both inside and outside my firewall. At first I didn't quite understand and ended up using the DigitalMapping domain as the root for Active Directory. The workstation hosts started to register their IP's in the DigitalMapping zone, which is what they are suppose to do, but the IP addresses were designated for local networks (behind my firewall). To complicate it further, the slave name server was BIND. While BIND allows dynamic updates, it refused to accept some of the strange stuff AD was registering with the DNS server. When I finally decided there was a problem, I also decided that I was jeopardizing my commercial web sites by having them on my test system, so I upgraded to the model I have now.

I started the upgraded by deleting AD. I don't think there is a way to change the root domain of AD without a reinstall. That was a disaster in itself as it was the only domain controller and all the user information got deleted also. I reinstalled AD and put the root at local.DigitalMapping.sk.ca. When I added the zone for DigitalMapping.sk.ca to DNS it automatically joined the two together. I deleted the subdomain connection. When I got gainsbery up and running, I transferred the master zones there except for the local one. The darkstar DNS is now a forwarding server except for the single local zone. The local network uses it as the first name server so they see the local.DigitalMapping.sk.ca zone, plus can query for Internet addresses. Since the local zone is not a subdomain of the DigitalMapping.sk.ca zone, nobody outside knows about this local zone. It's also guarrentteed to be unique as nobody else is allowed to be a subdomain of DigitalMapping.sk.ca. This is similar to what was suggested in the reading I did, but with a twist. The only problem is that if my single local name server fails, the local network will still be able to see the Internet, but not the local network.

Overall Observations and Comments

The Active Directory may be a way to solve administration problems in a big organization, but like BackOffice, is overkill in my small organization. However, in a small office with different interests, there is a place for separate servers for different tasks. Besides redundancy, they can run on less hardware, and do unburden the workstations.

The next step here is to clean up darkstar. The Windows 2000 install was over a Windows NT install, so a complete reinstall with just the basics I need for file and print sharing plus AD and DNS will make this system run a lot better on the limited hardware it has.

 

Last updated: Sunday, September 03, 2006