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Ignoring speed and performance issues, and this would be for under 20 users, what would be the best minimal topology and order for installing these five MS 2016 application servers on top of Win2012R2 OS servers, ranked in order of importance:

  • [DC] A Domain Controller - Requisite
  • [OWA] Office Web Apps - Very Mandatory
  • [Ex] Exchange - Mandatory
  • [SP] Sharepoint -Somewhat Optional
  • [Sk] Skype Server - Very Optional

We'd like to use only two OS servers/instances if possible, but would there be vast improvement gains from three or four OS's running on lower-performing CPU's (where [enclosed in bracket is running on one OS] and left to right is the order of installation):

Setup1:

  • [DC]+[OWA,Ex,SP,Sk]

Setup2:

  • [DC]+[Ex]+[OWA,SP,Sk]

Setup3:

  • [DC]+[Ex,Sk]+[OWA,SP]

This is also presuming multi-partitioned hard-drives as required by the installation, with complete instance snapshots performed weekly as backups.

2 Answers 2

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You cannot install Exchange and Office Web Apps on the same server. Putting Exchange on to a DC isn't a good idea.

The best option here is to use VM tech with two physical boxes:

Host 1: VM1: DC, VM2: Exchange Host 2: VM1: DC, VM2: Office Web Apps server. Remember with Windows 2012 R2 standard, you can install two VMs on a single physical machine.

Sharepoint does not play nicely with anything else. Therefore another VM would be the best option for that. That will mean another Windows licence. Cannot answer questions about Skype, but I expect it is similar.

Mandatory cloud answer though - for 20 users you should be only looking at Office365 - unless there is some specific reason why you cannot look at the cloud. If bandwidth is the issue, when comparing numbers ensure that you also include the cost of Office licences in the comparison.

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  1. I wouldn't put anything on the DC other than AD DS, DNS, DHCP and possibly Print Server.

  2. OWA is a component of Exchange. It's not a separate Role.

  3. SharePoint and Skype could potentially be installed on the same server.

  4. I don't understand this statement: This is also presuming multi-partitioned hard-drives as required by the installation. What installation requirements are you referring to? Can you cite/link them? Configuring multiple partitions on the same HDD or RAID array does nothing in terms of performance or recoverability. I'm not sure if you're thinking along those lines but that reconcile with my thinking. For instance, if you separate your Exchange databases and transaction logs onto different partitions/volumes on the same underlying HDD or RAID array they're still going to contend for the same underlying disk (because they have different I/O patterns: random versus sequential), negating any potential performance benefits of separating them. Additionally, if the underlying disk or array fails then you've lost any recoverability benefit that you'd gain by separating them (because your databases and logs would be on the same physical HDD/Array, making recovery more difficult in the event of a HDD/Array failure).

I'd suggest a minimum of 3 servers:

  1. AD DS/DNS/DHCP/Print Server

  2. Exchange Server

  3. SharePoint/Skype - of course you'll need to do the homework to find out if SharePoint and Skype can be installed on the same server.

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