Replace Windows Servers with UCS - How would you do it?

UCS - Univention Corporate Server
#1

Hello :slight_smile:

I want to replace my Windows Servers 2016 with an fresh UCS installation.
As it is my private home system, i have no problem to start with a fresh UCS system :slight_smile:
Actually i have 3 Windows 2016 Servers with forest level 2012_R2.
I tried to connect UCS to this, but it fails, so i decited not to focus on migration.

My Servers are as followed:
1x Windows Server 2016 as DC
1x Windows Server 2016 running Exchange 2016
1x Windows Server 2012 R2 as file server, also running an DMS software (EcoDMS)

All servers are running on a HP MicroServer Gen 8 with 16GB Ram, Celeron 1610T, 4x 4TB HDD as Raid1 (8TB total) and ESXi on a 250GB SSD in the ODD port of the server.
ESXi is running from the internal MicroSD card.

I want to start on the same server with Proxmox, which will be placed on the SSD with all coming VMs. There is also a NAS which will be the backup place for the VMs of the SSD.
The HDDs will be the data store for the fileserver.

My thoughts are now as followed:
1x UCS as Master Server (32GB HDD)
1x UCS as Member Server for Kopano as Mail Server (100GB HDD)
1x UCS as Member Server for File Server + DMS software (Not sure which software, i guess only UCS and some shares to the Datastore HDDs?) (32GB + 8TB Datastore)

Does it make sense doeing it like this or what would be a better solution in your eyes?

With best regards,
Michael

#2

Hello. I’ve been running multiple Proxmox instances for many years now and 4 UCS VMs as a test for almost 3 years, but mainly using AD and mail (Postfix+Dovecot) components. Right now, I’m putting together a new set of UCS with clean install of v.5. The setup will be used in a small environment of ~20 people. So, multiple UCS servers seem like an overkill for one user. But, hey, if you want, do it. Proxmox + UCS are very affordable open-source solutions. :slight_smile:

UCS1 - primary directory node
UCS2 - backup directory node
UCS3 - member node - file server
UCS4 - replica directory node - mail

I run Proxmox on SSD with ZFS in raid-10 and have no complains with performance. All Proxmox VMs are imaged to a NAS. A fresh PDN install is about 5GB. It uses virtually no SWAP. The 3 year old PDN that I just upgraded from 4.8 to 5.0 has a little 10GB used space. UCS in such a role is doing well with 4GB RAM.

I have not played with file sharing much, just finished creating one share yesterday to make sure win7 and win10 clients can see it after starting with Windows logon script.

I’m not familiar with Kopano. I’m hesitant to commit to solutions that seem a bit bloated at the first glance. I could be wrong with such assessment, of course. I am a very long time Linux user (Debian for servers, which is what Proxmox is based on, and Arch as my own workstation) and try to use open source as much as possible. Thunderbird has been my mail client for a long time also. What UCS is missing at this moment is Roundcube or SOGo. I’d personally stick with Roundcube to have an ability to get to mail via a web browser and will try to create a separate VM with it and integrate with UCS LDAP. At my work, I have hard-to-die Outlook users. SOGo could work better for them as a web client. Another option is to utilize Nextcloud file sharing solution with few tricks to support CalDAV, CardDAV for Outlook users. Nextcloud is available as UCS app. I already have it running separately. Anyway… Sorry for too much info.

Good luck with your builds!

#3

Hello dejavu,

thank you for your replay.
I have no changed my Microserver over to Proxmox and now are running UCS as 1 VM on Proxmox, beside some other LXC container which are not connected to UCS (Proxy, pihole…)
This is working perfectly, and now, after some testing time, i want to make the next step and add a file server function.

I prepared 2x 4TB Mirrors as ZFS data storage and are now thinking about how i will create this file server.

On my old server, i made a backup of this 8TB to an external USS HDD using robocopy by a small batch file.
Also i made some backups to my NAS with robocopy for the most important files (Documents, Pictures e.g.).

What would you prefer to recreate this layout, have a file server with NAS and USB backup?
Should i use the UCS server also as file server or should i create another VM (maybe freenas?) and go with such a solution?

With best regards,
Michael

#4

Hi
I would suggest to use the UCS Server as File Server and setup a FreeNAS with e.g. 2 mirrored disks for Backup.
This FreeNAS Volume I would add as iSCSI Device to Proxmox and use Proxmxox Backups Server as VM directly on Proxmox with this iSCSI LUN as Backup Stoore - you would get a dedup backup with incremental backups forever - able to restore whole VM’s or single files from inside the VM’s (Linux, Windows VM’s)

rg
Christian

#5

Hello,

today i mounted 2x ZFS storages to my UCS server as /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1 which are created each out of 2x 4TB HDDs.
The file system is ext4 and i mounted the disks to /data1 and /data2
I also created some shares in UCS and until now, this is working.

But when i add this to my /etc/fstab, the server is not rebooting, it is entering the maintenance mode. Here i removed the fstab entries and the server reboots.

the fstab entry looks like this:
/dev/sdb1 [tab] /data1 [tab] ext4 [tab] defaults,acl,user_xattr [tab] 0 [tab] 0
/dev/sdc1 [tab] /data2 [tab] ext4 [tab] defaults,acl,user_xattr [tab] 0 [tab] 0

Maybe someone can give me a hint where my mistake is located. I cannot find any wrong letter or something like this comparing to the manuals.

With best regards,
Michael

#6

Hi
for ext4 i would change the pass from 0 to 2 for fs checking
also u may remove acl and user_xattr as they are integrated in the default mount option already , you may check this by: tune2fs -l /dev/sdb1 | grep "Default mount options"

next i would highly recommend to exchange /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1 with the UUID= naming,
you get the UUID of the disks by “blkid” command on the shell
as with changing or adding disks the name may change e.g. /dev/sdb1 by get /dev/sdd1 or whatever

so it would look like:

UUID=61b515c6-627e-4e4a-8682-ba073cc407b7 /data1 ext4 defaults 0 2

rg
Christian

#7

Hello Christian,

thank you for the advise about the UUID and the defaults.
I changed it to the UUID and use only the defaults parameter.
Now it is working, thank you a lot.
During the check of the parameters and change over to the UUID i saw that the problem was triggered by an “.” instead an “,” between the defaults,acl parameter… shame on me

With best regards,
Michael

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