Virtualisation

Deathwish · 24 Jun 2008 at 18:02

So, who is using/is going to be using virtualisation? And if you do, what form is it in? VMWare ESX, MS Virtual Server etc.

Currently building a test bed system for Windows Server 2008, looking to the future for Hyper-V and the possibility of us using some form of virtualisation for our smaller applications.

Would be interested to hear in your experiences, and hardware specifications you have used.

Cheers

Deathwish · 24 Jun 2008 at 18:56

Heh, some nice set-ups there guys

We aren't big enough (yet) to be considering Blades (And we certainly don't have the power capacity). We don't have a SAN so that won't work either

I am mainly looking at Virtualisation for cutting down on the amount of hardware we would have, as we do have a lot of small apps sitting on a lot DL320 class servers. Obviously after you get to a certain point you would be benefiting from reduced power and heat requirements. Oh, and the Carbon Footprint people are hovering closely, what with being a Local Authority

We currently have a 6 server Citrix farm, so I will have a look at XenServer. Ta

Deathwish · 24 Jun 2008 at 21:12

Cheers J1nxy, will give that a look too!

I appreciate, and agree, that shared storage is the best way for virtualisation. I would invisage that a SAN is not far off our radar and within the next few years I could see us having one.

The apps that I am looking at the moment are mainly our management tools (Insight Manager, WSUS, Anti-Virus, etc). So a fairly low key and something from which I can recover if something goes wrong.

Deathwish · 1 Jul 2008 at 22:20

Would also be interested to hear of HyperV usage.

Deathwish · 17 Jul 2008 at 22:20

Well, so far I have setup a computer to test the water with Hyper-V.

Xeon 3350 - 2.66Ghz
Intel DQ35JO Motherboard
8Gb PC6400 DDR2 Memory
320Gb Western Digital SATA2 HDD for Windows Server 2008 Std w/Hyper-V
2x 750Gb Western Digital SATA2 HDD in RAID1 for Guests

Not the fastest thing in the world, but for a £600 test bed its OK.

Was looking into the best ways of integrating the backup of the guests into our current NetBackup architecture but it doesn't look like there is an agent yet.

What are other people doing regards backup?