Should Production Windows Web Servers (IIS & SQL) be in a domain?

Posted by tlianza on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by tlianza
Published on 2011-01-12T18:50:57Z Indexed on 2011/01/12 18:55 UTC
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We have a few web servers and a few database servers. To date, they've been standalone machines that are not part of a domain. The web servers don't talk to each other, and the web servers talk to the database servers via SQL Auth.

My concern with putting the machines in a domain together were

added complexity - it's one more "thing" running, and doing "things" that could go wrong.
risk - if a domain controller fails, am I now putting other machines at risk?

However, in certain scenarios it does seem convenient for them to be on a domain, sharing credentials. For example, if I want to give the "services" control on one machine access to another machine (because Remote Desktop craps out) I need to go in and assign privileges on multiple machines - something that I believe Active Directory and Domain Accounts set to simplify.

My question: I'm sure there are things I'm not considering here. Is there a best practice?

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