Do I Really Need a Domain Controller? March 4, 2009
Do I Really Need a Domain Controller?
As a small business owner, you always have to go through the critical decision-making on where to spend your hard-fought dollars on technology. Security, servers, networking, workstations…everything takes a bite out of your dwindling IT dollar. You need to identify what is mission critical for your business and what is not.
So the question arises, do I need a domain controller? Let’s examine this further.
What’s a Domain Controller?
Windows NT uses the concept of a domain to manage user access to network resources (printers, apps, etc.) for a group of users. A user identified in this domain only has to log in to that domain to access these resources which are part of the domain, but may actually be connected to a number of different servers on the network. One server - the domain controller - manages the master user database and thus controls user access to these resources.
There is an obvious advantage to this model - detailed user access control to the various domain resources. But is this necessary for a small business?
Small Business Needs
The primary concern here is regarding buying of software and services you don’t need just because a sales person told you that you needed it. This is a trap that the small business owner must always fight to avoid. For the small business, there are as many downsides with the domain controller as there are upsides. To make this point, I culled some information from a great article by A.P. Lawrence from 2007.
Downsides:
- Sales person will sell it to you to make the installation task easier
- May cause a problem in a mixed app environment (Unix, Linux, etc.)
- Future difficulty connecting XP home computers to small business network with a domain controller
Summary
The bottom line for the small business - make sure it makes sense for you and that you’re not just buying it because you were told to do so. Investigate your alternatives, don’t be afraid to ask smart and even stupid questions (because there really are no stupid questions when you’re trying to protect your budget), and very thoughtfully consider all of the alternatives.
Unfortunately, this economy mandates that you carefully consider all business expenditures. And hardware and software spending is no exception. Make sure that you are making the right choice for your current and future needs.
