Here we go again

[plexer]

Ok I'm planning a virtulisation project.

Storage is planned on 2 of these:

IBM x3650 M3, Xeon 4C E5620
8GB
6 x 1TB 6GBPS SAS disks (can take up to 16)
SANSymphony-V storage software providing real time mirroing between the 2 storage servers

2 Hyper-V Hosts:

x3550 M3 Xeon, 4C E5606
16GB
2 x 500GB 6GBPS SAS disks for OS

Gigabit network between them all with the 2 storage servers and the 2 hosts remote across the school with fibre between them.

Thoughts?

Ben

[bossman]

Why 500Gb drives for your hosts?

We only have 2x 73Gb SAS 15000 rpm drives mirrored in our Dell 2950 power edge hosts x3 connected to our 2 storage SANs with HA.

Also I would put as much memory as you can get into your hosts we have 32Gb in each but will upgrade this to 64Gb when we can afford it.

Everything else looks good though which hypervisor are you going with?

We run Xenserver 5.6 here and it has been rock solid with a very small footprint as opposed to VMware and Hyper-V also cheaper for other extras.

Hope this is is helpful.

[glennda]

Yeah looks good but wouldn't go with 500gb drives. I would echo bossmans advice and 72/3gb drives will do the job just as well.

how you planning on connecting your servers to your storage devices? iSCSI?

[SYNACK]

I would say loose the drives all together. Depending on the server it may already have built in iSCSI HBAs or if not it will be avalible with a cheapish liscence. This way the base OS boots off your storage servers too and you have tow less comparitivly slow disks burning power and waiting to go wrong.

This should work with most SAN type connectivity options, iSCSI, FC and SAS. Be cheaper and yeild faster performance and a more robust system overall.

[dhicks]

Thoughts?

Combine the storage and processing machines so you just have the two machines, mirrored between the two locations. As a school, I bet your need for storage will outstrip any need for raw processing power so you might as well combine the storage and processing and save a bit of cash / power consumption / space.

[sonofsanta]

Not doubling up on processors inside the Hyper-V hosts? If cost is an issue you might be better off with AMD's more-cores-less-money approach, unless you have some particularly intensive and time sensitive applications you plan on running.

[webman]

Is there a specific reason for choosing Hyper-V?

[plexer]

Is there a specific reason for choosing Hyper-V?

I'm a microsoft fanboy

Thanks for the ideas guys glad to see the basic thoughts are ok with a few tweaks.

The reason behind keeping the hosts seperate from the data store is that if required once the upgrades to the hosts are maxed out I can add another server to run more hosts or swap it for a higher/faster/newer spec box I guess.

Ben

[burgemaster]

Ben - really jelous.....

Anyhow, I was advised that these days having a pair of mirrored drives for the OS may not be any faster than having the OS on the same drives as the storage? Or maybe this was just in my case with Sata drives.?

Im setting up a Hyper-V RDP system and would love to read how you are setting it all up now and again
Currently with my test 2008 r2 TS VM, i have connected to it with my PC and played Eastender on iPlayer.. really jumpy and not really watchable. Should I be expecting perfect playback with a 1gig connection to the server from my PC?

[glennda]

how have you setup the rdp connection settings?

[burgemaster]

Bare minimum installed, Server 2008 R2 SP1, added the TS role and also the licencing service. On the install i ticked both "Audio and video playback", then installed adobe flashplayer... thats it so far.
I cant seem to find the RDP settings to change them on the server, e.g. Aero Experience etc. But in the RDP-TcP Properties i have set the Client Settings to 24bit Colour depth.
When actually connecting, I have tried selecting all the Connections speed options and all the same. Should I be expecting smooth playback?

Plextor - sorry to jump on your post, I will start a new thread now!

[SYNACK]

Bare minimum installed, Server 2008 R2 SP1, added the TS role and also the licencing service. On the install i ticked both "Audio and video playback", then installed adobe flashplayer... thats it so far.
I cant seem to find the RDP settings to change them on the server, e.g. Aero Experience etc. But in the RDP-TcP Properties i have set the Client Settings to 24bit Colour depth.
When actually connecting, I have tried selecting all the Connections speed options and all the same. Should I be expecting smooth playback?

Plextor - sorry to jump on your post, I will start a new thread now!

What client OS are you using, for best performance you want something current like Vista or 7 (or 7 thinpc) on the client.