As an adendum to Garys note about VCenter VMWare has a free VM appliance for managing your servers. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership for Strong Families
From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:david.mazzacc...@hudsonmobility.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 08:30 AM To: NT System Admin Issues <ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com> Subject: RE: New to virtualization Haven’t discussed clustering yet. I will probably look at a DR planning first? co-location or replicating to another of my offices maybe? WOW – I just noticed all the replies trickling in due to the delays of this list. THANKS EVERYONE! This really turned into a great thread, w/ tons of info. From: Art DeKneef [mailto:art.dekn...@cox.net] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 1:04 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: New to virtualization Good topic David as I’m planning for a similar environment so I am interested in the same answers. Using Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services, main office and remote office with 6 servers and ~100+ people. Quick answers to some of the questions. Most recommend at least one physical box that is a DC, DNS, DHCP and management server. If everything happens to be off at the same time having this physical box online first solves issues of no DC being available. Yes you can schedule the VMs to start in a certain order but are all the other pieces running also. Exchange 2010 is supported being virtualized. I have no experience with Citrix but I’m sure Webster will be able to answer the question. Additional DCs can be virtualized. Only you can answer whether 7 TB of storage is enough. How much do you have now? What is expected growth rate? How expandable is the SAN? Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise includes the ability to run up to 4 VMs included in the price. You are not limited to 4. These 4 can be any combination of Standard or Enterprise. If you want to run more than 4 you need to have the appropriate number of server licenses. Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter includes the ability to run unlimited VMs. Well unlimited up to the limits of your hardware, CPU, RAM, etc. Datacenter is licensed per CPU and minimum of 2 CPUs. This is where a cost analysis will help. Do you plan on clustering the servers? From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:david.mazzacc...@hudsonmobility.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 8:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: New to virtualization Hi all, I am starting to investigate moving our aging network infrastructure into the virtual world. ~ 10 servers, 6-7 years old Windows 2003 domain Exchange 2003 Citrix 4.0 farm ~190 users After some initial discussions w/ a reseller, here’s what they are recommending: (3) DL 380 G7 servers (to host the VMs) ~$18,000 (1) Net App FAS2240 (this is the SAN that would host 12 600GB drives of storage for the VMs) ~$20,000 VMWare essentials plus kit (VMware software) ~$5200 (3) MS Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise (this would allow the 3 HP servers to run 4 Windows 2008 VMs each) I guess the way it would work is that the VMs would reside on the SAN, and the 3 hosts would call up the SAN to load each VM utilizing the host’s CPU, RAM, NIC, etc.)… right? I have meetings scheduled w/ 2 other vendors, but verbally both have started the conversation along the same path as above. Being very new to VM, does the above scenario seem to make sense? It is hard for me to imagine all that traffic going between the SAN and the host servers w/o creating a huge bottleneck (over gig Ethernet) Do people recommend virtualizing every server? Domain controllers? Exchange? Citrix farm (4 server)? Shouldn’t something be left physical? Is 7 TB of storage enough (probably only 3 usable after array config)? Is the net app a decent appliance? $20k sounds cheap to me… I have done a little more reading, and from what I understand w/ 3 Windows Enterprise licenses, I would be limiting myself to 12 VMs. However, if I went w/ 3 Windows Datacenter licenses, for a small increase in price - I would get unlimited VMs? Which would allow for actually having a testing environment, and better patch deployment? 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