What are the drawbacks to also making my cluster nodes Active Directory domain controllers and global catalog servers?
Scott Schnoll: There are three main reasons why you want your Exchange 2000 cluster nodes to be member servers and not domain controllers or global catalog servers. First, Active Directory has its own built-in mechanisms for replication and redundancy, and to a certain extent, failover. Second, both Active Directory and Exchange 2000 are resource hungry applications. If you put them both on the same machine, they will essentially fight it out for resources. Third, adding Active Directory complicates restore and recovery of your nodes. It’s much easier to recover from the loss of a node if all you have to do is recover Exchange 2000. If you need to also recover Active Directory, you’ll have additional downtime and complexity to deal with. Having said that, if one cluster node in a two-node cluster is a domain controller, the other node must also be a domain controller. What would you recommend for providing high-availability or failure for the application and/or database? Scott Schnoll:
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