Server Virtualisation Project

[tbz_ck]

Hi

We currently have 9 servers in our environment, all running Windows 2003, and most are poorly utilised. The equipment is also ancient and due for replacement anyway.

I want to consolidate our environment using a physical to virtual copy process and hosting the Windows 2003 servers on 2 or 3 Windows 2008 servers running the Hyper-V role.

Now the question. Everything we run is pretty much Microsoft based and I thought that an MS virtualisation solutiun would be better suited to our environment. Hyper-V though is brand new and not really in a v1.0 form. Although I'm convinced I could run with a v1.0 product without issue I'm wondering what you guys would do and whether you would rather use VMWare or another hypervisor for this kind of project.

I'll be wanting to virtualise Exchange 2003, F&P services, Intranet, WSUS and EPO (McAfee) and my 2 domain controllers. RSA SecurID and my ISA server 2004 will not be virtualised.

Thanks for your thoughts

 

[tbz_ck]

I've already done my research ISA 2004 cannot be virtualised without problems, although ISA 2006 can. The RSA server already hosts 1 virtual server which is ticking over nicely. It was part of a pilot test process and it worked so well the Virtual Server 2005 product was used to host an engineering based database app.

In your opinion what are the benefits of ESX server compared to Hyper-V please?

I wasn't convinced it was worth the extra cost at the time I looked at it.

Regards

ck

 

[tbz_ck]

I think what I'm going to do is buy one of my target servers and see if I can get trial versions of each of the two solutions. I can then see for myself which will work better in my environment before buying the other two servers and moving all of the VM's across.

If I set up a new vlan I can keep it pretty much separate too and test throughput, manageability, and test my intended backup strategy. I was intending on doing all of this anyway, but only with the Microsoft solution. I think I'll try it with both products and see which is the better fit.

Thanks

ck

 

[tbz_ck]

You can't live migrate VM's with Hyper-V, meaning if you want to shutdown the host for whatever reason, you have to shutdown the VM's.

2 ESX boxes with shared storage (doesn't have to be a SAN as such) when bought as a Virtual Infrastructure 3 solution need never have to shutdown a VM again.

Its more expensive, but its better.

Mmmm interesting. Its going to be determined by what budget I can eek out of our parent company. Out of interest what do you think it would cost to host up to 8 servers (and a completely separate mirrored environment for testing so 16 in all) on VI3 with shared storage. I'm prepared to purchase up to 3 servers at around £6k each.

Cheers

CK

 

[tbz_ck]

Its a SME so only around 70 mailboxes, and a database around 16Gb (public and private) for Exchange.

Network was only just upgraded to full Gigabit to the desktop including vlan separation of voice and data traffic (we have a full VoIP solution I put in too)

 

[tbz_ck]

Ouch that SAN is expensive. They will never agree to that! What about iScsi? I saw an MS demo of VM clustering using iSCSI and 2 host servers.

To be honest, a hot swap of a running VM without a shutdown isn't that important in our environment. We don't have anything running that couldn't be missed for short time and I'm more than happy to inconvenience users if absolutely necessary

If that's the main benefit of ESX and Vmotion on a storage area network then its not really necessary. The ability to move VM's between host servers IS necessary, but not on the fly.

I'm also keen on Windows 2008 as a host given that it'll provide me additional benefits within our domain if I make it a DC (especially when it comes to managing our vista clients).

Oh, and I'm an HP server kinda guy. Wouldn't touch Dell with someone else's !!

 

[tbz_ck]

Thanks for your replies folks. You've given me a lot to think about. Next stage is get a server in and test. I really can't see me being able to get a shared storage solution though however beneficial it might be.