Disk Arrangement

mdjmcnally · 4 May 2007 at 11:00

I am looking to build 3 Fedora Core 64bit Servers, for the purpose of acting as VMWare Servers.

Looking for recommendation on how best to arrange the 4 disks.

Option 1: Raid0 all 4 drives
Option 2: Run as JBOD - 1 for OS, 1 each for a total of 3 Virtual Servers
Option 3: Raid5 all 4 drives
Option 4: Open to suggestions

Many Thanks

feriso · 4 May 2007 at 22:52

RAID5 - data security and speed really will get my vote.

BoomAM · 8 May 2007 at 15:13

How intensive is the disk usage likely to be on the virtual server systems?

mdjmcnally · 9 May 2007 at 12:41

I will be running a Win2003 system fully in virtual, so will have AD servers, DNS, ISA, Exchange, WSUS, IAS, Anti-Virus etc running on virtual servers.

My plan is to build a 'full' Microsoft Network to allow me to improve my Microsoft skills, and also allow me to test out any additional software easily by dropping onto a Virtual Server. As such will be at home for personal use.

I work with Security products and somehow seemed to completly skip working with Win2003 other then as the customers choice of platform for things like RSA ACE or Websense, where the customer is performing the Windows configuration.

I have a total of 3 physical servers, Dual Socket Opty265 with 4Gb of RAM fitted with 4 Seagte 7200.10 250Gb drives. The plan being that could allocate 1 core and 1Gb of RAM to each Virtual Serve for a total of 3 Virtual Servers per Physical box, I could also possibly allocate physical disk per virtual server, thus making 4 1.8Ghz CPU, 1Gb of Memory, 1 disk machines from each physical server.

Will have primary AD on one with the backup AD server on the second etc, to provide some resilience, looking to backup the Virtual Images to a NAS box to provide backup facilities.

I understand (though could be wrong) that Exchange, AD etc could be quite disk intensive.

thelonecrouton · 9 May 2007 at 12:52

I'd go with Raid 5, but tbh you sound like you've got massive hardware overkill there for what you want. Not that there's anything wrong with overkill mind...

mdjmcnally · 9 May 2007 at 13:00

I'm not a patient man so I tend to overkill the hardware so I don't have to wait. I figure it will also allow me to expand the software running on the network quickly and easily.

BoomAM · 9 May 2007 at 17:10

mdjmcnally said:
...snip...

Sounds good.
Is it for a corporate enviroment, or a faff around at home? Because if its the latter, i wouldnt worry about exchange/SQL/whatever being intensive, unless you have 20+ client computers, it wouldnt really matter imo.

Your idea of seperating them, if its possible, to one core/1gb/1hdd per virtual enviroment is ideal. Unfortunatelly, that wont really work with RAID5 unless you can have a 3 disk RAID5 set per OS.
The best idea imo would be to have it as you have said, but then just have 2xstripped drives per OS, and then have a RAID5 arrary for the 'crucial' data to share between the lot. Imo.

What guides/sources are you using for doing this?
I'd like to migrate our servers at work over to a virtual enviroment ones, as it makes backup SO much easyier, but im yet to find any guides/info of any use thus far.

mdjmcnally · 9 May 2007 at 19:23

It is a mess about at home, run my home email server etc, is just myself with a Games Rig, Media Center and an Office/Internet PC. Is overkill but will allow me to improve my Microsoft skills. As such by the sounds of it I shouldn't have too much disk usage.

In terms of guides then only really what I have read on the Microsoft Site, a couple of forums using Google and the VMWare website document. VMWare convertor looks good for converting real servers to virtual environments. As it is home not corporate then can make the mistakes and move on from them. I am starting from a green environment so luckily don't need to worry if I get completely wrong.

Using VMware server at work then on a dual core server then could allocate the amount of RAM, and also the number of processors. If seperating out to a single disk per virtual then I would be running as a JBOD and having 1 disk per virtual with the Virtual Disk being all that was on the particular HD.

BoomAM · 12 May 2007 at 13:58

Can you tell me where your getting the VM server software from by any chance? I cant find it myself.

Im setting up a custom built system in the next two weeks that'll function as a print server, NAS & a few other jobs.
I wouldnt mind running 2 virtual machines on it for a laugh.

Is the virtual machine software your using a 'close to the metal' one? Where its actually a lightweight OS? Or is it one that needs something like XP running as the host OS?

Thanks.

.

mdjmcnally · 12 May 2007 at 18:20

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

I am looking to use VMWare Server, which is free, you still need to put a Guest OS on the machine for this for which I am looking to use Fedora as whilst not officially supported I have found some guides on getting it to work. As is a home server then not a problem.

I have sadly had to give up the RAID5 idea as the Fedora won't install to it, the only time don't get an exception error is on a RAID0. I can't find a driver disk guide for the files that Nvidia provide as the guiides all talk about an .img file. A friend said however that as the Nvidia SATA isn't a full hardware RAID then wouldn'twork anyway with RAID5.

Fortuanately Highpoint do provide .img files and a guide to create the driver disk so will work with that once up and running.

BoomAM · 16 May 2007 at 12:36

Odd.
VMware doesnt seem to want to work with Vista64, and the MS Virtual Machine 2007, doesnt support HW virtualisation, even though im fairly sure this C2D does support it in hardware?

Ideas?

mdjmcnally · 16 May 2007 at 20:22

At the moment VMWare doesn't seem to support Vista as a host OS, Guest OS for Vista is still experimental as well.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the HW virtualisation is in C2D but not enabled in an attempt to force people to buy the XEON chips for Server environments.

BoomAM · 16 May 2007 at 22:34

mdjmcnally said:
At the moment VMWare doesn't seem to support Vista as a host OS, Guest OS for Vista is still experimental as well.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the HW virtualisation is in C2D but not enabled in an attempt to force people to buy the XEON chips for Server environments.

I found out the problem, hardware virtualisation is disabled in E4xxx chip aparentely. Guess what type of C2D were running?

.

Ive been using MS Virtual Server 2007 quite successfully upto now.
Setup a XP Virtual machine with 768Mb of mem/30Gb disk space, running quite well, touch wood. Connects to the domain as well.
If it turns out to be reliable like that, then i'll be over the moon.

.

madman045 · 17 May 2007 at 09:21

mdjmcnally said:
At the moment VMWare doesn't seem to support Vista as a host OS, Guest OS for Vista is still experimental as well.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the HW virtualisation is in C2D but not enabled in an attempt to force people to buy the XEON chips for Server environments.

Now the vmware workstation 6 has been released, it now supports Vista as a host OS and I have been using the beta on my vista laptop without an issue.

Highly recommend it

BoomAM · 17 May 2007 at 23:17

madman045 said:
Now the vmware workstation 6 has been released, it now supports Vista as a host OS and I have been using the beta on my vista laptop without an issue.

Highly recommend it

VMware workstation isnt free.

Plus, this MS one im running seems to do everything i need pretty well anyway.

.