Right Now, I have a Master Server, running Domain Controller (Active Directory), DNS Server, Application Server and File Server. I also have a 2 Extra VMWare Virtual Servers emulated on the Master Server, 1 runs Windows 2000 Advanced Server and that is a Exchange Server and a VPN Server, Another one runs Windows Server 2003 and is a Terminal Server. Now, must I seperate my DNS server from my Active Directory server? Do I need a DNS Server at all since I have No-IP? The reason I am asking this is because, when I log into my user, it sometimes takes forever to log in or it logs me in and then after being on my user long, it freezes my taskbar for a while and then when I click start, displays my UserID instead of my Full Name. How Do I fix this problem?

DNS is absolutely required for Active Directory. "when I log into my user, it sometimes takes forever to log in or it logs me in and then after being on my user long, it freezes my taskbar for a while" You consolidated DNS, Active Directory, VPN server, Terminal Services, and Exchange servers all on one physical machine, and used virtualization to add additional burdens of multiple OS's running. Why does this surprise you it's slow? Please help survivors of Hurricane Katrina! www.redcross.org

I've consolidated DNS, Active Directory and VPN server on the physical machine and Terminal Services, and Exchange server as two different virtual machines. When logging into my user, it sometimes is slow and sometimes is normal but sometimes it does not detect the server and when I click on the start menu, it just displays my UserID instead of my user name. This only happens to the client I always use. I mean there isn't anything wrong with the client I always use but why is it doing that? Whenever I click start, for example is displays NIHAL instead of Nihal Fernando and when I log off and log on again, it takes forever to log in. How do I fix this problem? Is there something on the clients side I have settings to change?

"I've consolidated DNS, Active Directory and VPN server on the physical machine and Terminal Services, and Exchange server as two different virtual machines." And this is on how many physical machines? One. And it would be faster actually if you weren't using virtualization. You're tripling the amount of OS code that must run on the physical machine. The only thing you really gained via virtualization is security since you don't have Terminal Services running on a DC or Exchange server. Nevertheless, this design is pretty horrid. It just doesn't surprise me you're going to have issues in general. Until this is designed properly with adequate hardware resources, you'll continue to have issues. "How many squirrels had to die to make you look fly?!"

My first guess would be the workstations are not pointed at your virtualized DNS server. My second guess is your hardware is VERY underspecs for what you are running. Minimally is this a dual processor with dual core? Minimum 4gig of memory [better if 8gig or 12gig]? Knowing the correct answer and giving a correct answer, are two different things

First: My Server is a Intel Pentium D Dual Core Processor with 2 GB of RAM. There's still no reason why this is no good and My DNS Server is on the Domain Controller. Second: I don't understand how virtualization makes issues. It works well for me and I don't get it when you say it triples the OS Code. The design is not horrid. Virtualization is like when you have extra computers actually ghost computers running of a single system. Each Virtual Machine has its own Mac Address and Static IP, so I don't see a problem with Virtualization. Security is not the only thing I have gained, but are you sure that virtualization is not good? You were saying that I am doing wrong but your resonings aren't that clear. Tell me what to do and how to fix these problems. Must I reinstall DNS onto another system or virtual system?

"First: My Server is a Intel Pentium D Dual Core Processor with 2 GB of RAM. There's still no reason why this is no good and My DNS Server is on the Domain Controller." Depending on how many users and how busy your network is, those specs would most often reflect a server running Exchange only, not running as a DC, DNS server, Terminal Server, and VPN server. Sorry, but that's a ridiculous amount of load to put on that server unless you have a REALLY small amount of users and you don't have a lot of mail, authentication going on. And even then you have a single point of failure in that single server. If one critical component fails such as the motherboard, or a memory chip, you lose all services. You also have a single point of failure within the virtualization service for all services provided by VM's. If VMWare service stops for whatever reason, you lose VPN access, Exchange, and Terminal Services. "It works well for me and I don't get it when you say it triples the OS Code. " If it works well, why are you having performance issues?! How many different instances of Windows are you running? Three! The Host OS + the two virtual machine OS's. That's tripling the amount of OS code over not using virtualization and setting up all services to run on what is your host OS right now. "Virtualization is like when you have extra computers actually ghost computers running of a single system. Each Virtual Machine has its own Mac Address and Static IP, so I don't see a problem with Virtualization." Virtualization is NOT ghosting a machine to other machines! "Each Virtual Machine has its own Mac Address and Static IP, so I don't see a problem with Virtualization." Say, do these VM's each get their own physical NIC's? No. When you run 2 VM's + the host OS like you're doing, does a 10/100 NIC triple its throughput? No! How about their own physical CPU each? No. Do they each get 2 gigs of memory all to themselves? No! When you run a VM on a machine, it must share the physical resources of the machine, such as RAM, processor cycles, and bandwidth of the NIC, etc. with the host OS and other VM's. So let's take a look at this config just in respect to RAM. You got a Host OS running DC, DNS services + a VM running Exchange and Terminal Services, + a VM providing VPN services. First off, what you chose to run on the host OS and what you chose to run on a VM isn't right. Exchange is by far your most resource intensive service of any of this, so it should have gone on the host OS, especially in light of how much it depends upon fast disk I/O. DC/DNS duties is relatively light, and would run a lot better as a VM than Exchange. But let's look at your design as is. You'd probably need to leave 768M for the Host OS since it is the host OS. That leaves you with 1024M for your Exchange and Terminal Services VM, and 256M for the VPN VM? Exchange alone should have 1 gig minimum and shouldn't even be providing Terminal Services. 256M for a VPN server? Hope you're not running any kind of good encryption like L2TP/IPSec because those are always resource intensive. You also pay the price of running multiple instances of basically the same code: the operating systems. Also, since the hardware used within a VM is virtualized and not what the physical hardware actually is, you pay another performance penalty for not running device drivers in the VM that were made for your actual hardware, (see above why Exchange should be running on your host OS, and not a VM). In exchange, you do gain some benefits such as easier migrations of servers from physical server to physical server, sometimes increased security as I mentioned above, etc. However, you must realize the advantages AND the limitations of what virtualization provides. If this is a small business who couldn't afford multiple physical servers, one must wonder why you chose the route you did instead of something like Small Business Server 2003 Premium with Exchange, AD, VPN access via the integrated ISA 2004, etc. Do the business decision makers realize the performance penalty associated with your design? The increased likeliness of loss of service from a software or hardware fault? Also, let me take a wild guess that you're not even using VMWare's enterprise virtualization solution: GSX Server. You're probably using the free VMWare Server product. I am pro-virtualization. It is the wave of the future, but you have to thoroughly understand it and know how to use it. I could see running for example two NLB'ed web servers as VM's, with nodes split between two physical servers. Ditto domain controllers because you're splitting load between two PHYSICAL machines and providing fault tolerance in hardware. But to concentrate all this on one physical server via virtualization is a disaster waiting to happen. If this is for a business, that server is basically what I use at my house just as a learning lab that is absolutely not critical if it goes down, nor is it receiving email or having clients logging in regularly. I'd never consider using this for production! This design is horrid. It's by your own admission not functioning properly, and it's clearly weak in fault tolerance and performance. Please help survivors of Hurricane Katrina! www.redcross.org