Which VM?

TRNC · 20 Jul 2012 at 22:06

We have a requirement to run 2 simultanious servers on one hardware box, the first is SBS2011 for the modern part of the business, file shares, email etc., the second is Windows XP (32 bit) for a very old 16-bit piece of software.

I gather there is a free version of ESXi and also XenServer - which is better for really basic simple virtualisation or is there a more suited alternative?

TRNC · 20 Jul 2012 at 22:32

Thanks for the info 101001101

We are looking at it from a purely practical point of view as a SME who dont have an IT department and are growing whilst trying to update old systems and bring in new without losing everything - it just needs to be simple!!

TRNC · 21 Jul 2012 at 06:58

We dont have a second box, we have 1 but 2 requirements. The XP system will be with us to our grave!

It also makes sense with something that is on 24/7 to use as little hardware as possible, why run 2 boxes when 1 will do??

TRNC · 24 Jul 2012 at 17:30

danielanthony said:
SBS is pants btw and there will be no further versions produced.

Pants according to who? It fills a gap in the market very nicely. Do you have a link to the MS page stating its now discontinued?

TRNC · 24 Jul 2012 at 19:37

We dont want cloud services, and dont need full blown multi-server nightmare installs either much like most SME's in the UK.

Ho hum, stick with the current version forever and ever I guess or at least until someone else launches a replacement??

TRNC · 24 Jul 2012 at 21:08

MasterPlan1 said:
But either way, you have SBS 2011, just install the Hyper-V role and install XP on there.. Job done.

Hyper V doesnt work on SBS 2011 except with the premium add-on which we dont have and cant install on our version

TRNC · 29 Jul 2012 at 07:26

two00lbwaster said:
Just a question, why don't you skip hypervisors all together and install XP in software Virtualisation on the SBS server? A couple of command lines and you can get it to start in headless mode on boot if you want that.

TRNC said:
Hyper V doesnt work on SBS 2011 except with the premium add-on which we dont have and cant install on our version

Because as I said earlier in this thread - you cant as it doesnt work.

TRNC · 29 Jul 2012 at 07:27

Hades said:
If you only have one box then what will you do when you have a hardware failure?

The same as most of the other 4.5 million small businesses in the UK.....fix it and get back to work!

TRNC · 29 Jul 2012 at 10:35

The files & software are absolutely 100% critical, but we are a small business.

We dont have an IT department, we dont have multiple servers (well, 2 currently but we want to reduce that to 1 as one is rather old!)

Even with a complete failure of the hardware we could be back up and running in a few hours tops and have everything back up to date within a day. That may not be acceptable in businesses with It departments, multi-redundant servers, SANS with live backups and failovers but for most small businesses its more than acceptable.

We take regular whole system backups which live both on and off site in a fireproof safes and use SpiderOAK to (almost) realtime replicate the database our system runs on.

TRNC · 29 Jul 2012 at 11:40

It is a capital purchase so you can write off a certain ammount each year against tax but its just not feasable for us to have a spare for "just in case" - that may not sound like good business from a corporate point of view but for us it may never get used before it gets to EOL, then its £1500+++ spent for no reason.

We do hold spare HDD's on the shelf in case we have a failure in the RAID array but other than that its just not viable.

TRNC · 2 Aug 2012 at 11:39

I'll give them a go first then, thankyou