Upgrading From 2003 (Clean Install)

[pritchardavid]

Ok I have uploaded a docx document what all our servers do (Havent done the admin severs, just doing the cirrucilm network first)

Also left out our backup/cache server out has I cant seem to be able to logon it, so get get the roles and software it has installed on it. (When I logon ot says it cant logon, Im using the correct username - It seems when it starts up, it say something, like it cant load a driver or service, so imgussing thats the problem)


So by looking at the document it seems server-5 has the most less software & roles

Would you advise to start with this server? I dont think sophus work correclly at the momment so thats not a problem

Printers - I suppose I could install the printer role on another server for the time being and setup the printers on that

What do I do about the dns server role? Transfer that to another server or just leave it has we have other servers that have the dns role running

Whats the best way of backing up the hard drive just incase things go things, was looking a tryinga a trial copy of 'Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Server'


Want to use hyper-v so need a plan how to setup it up; ie how many role services do go on one virtual os, and how many virtual os on each server

Gussing here

HyperV1 (Old Server 5)
--------
Server 1 - Printer Server, Domain Controller
Server 2 - Sophos Server (With SQL Has Sophos Needs)

HyperV2 (Old Server 4)
--------
Server 3 - WSUS, Streaming Media Sever, IIS
Server 4 - WDS, KMS, Domain Controller

HyperV3 (Old Server 6)
--------
Server 5 - DNS & DHCP, Domain Controller

Server 6 - Domain Controller

FILE SERVER
Few Mantory Profiles
StartMenu & Desktop Shortcuts
File Storage (For us admins ie Drivers, Backup, Software)
Software Distribution,
Student Share,
Staff Share
Ultrakey (Just a shared database, programe is deployed on the pcs)
Workshark (Just a shared database, programe is deployed on the pcs)
Bowland Maths (Just pdfs that lanuch for an exe)

HyperV4 (Old Server 7)
--------
Server 7 - DNS & DHCP Backup?
Server 8 - Impero Server & Console, Lexia Server

HyperV5 (Old Server MAIL)
--------
Server -9 - Exchange, Same Has Before

HyperV6 (Old Server Citrix01)
--------
Citrix01 - Citrix, Same Has Before

HyperV7 (Old Server Citrix02)
---------
Citrix02 - Citrix, Same Has Before


VLESERVER - No Changes Or Dump Sever (No X64 CPU, so no HyperV)

CACHE/BACKUPSERVER - Gussing Best To Just Keep this physical? Backups are done on tapes, daily, and full backup weekly and scheduled tasks using robo copy to copy files onto the the backup files from the servers (Only new and modifed files I think)


Anything want to finish that list that would be good, I'll try and finish it a myself later, just cant think whats the best to do, need to really know how many VMs to use on each server

Any help or advise would be good

[dhoward_westexetc]

One thing to bear in mind is that with a license of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition you can run 4 virtual machines on it as well as the physical host machine with that license.

What sort of spec are we talking about for each server? To be comfortable running 4 VMs plus physical server OS you need at least 24 GB RAM in each server, plus a pair of quad core processors.

Take a base RAM requirement for each virtual server of, say, 4 GB, then analyse what else that server will be doing and adjust as needed.

Exchange is heavy so give that a good 12 GB RAM, quite a few CPU cores and plenty of storage space for the mailbox database. It may even need to be on a server on its own.

[pritchardavid]

Ok just looked at the specs of the module server we have

This is for server 4,5,6,7

The modular server is a Intel® Modular Server System MFSYS35

The actuall modules is Intel MFS5000SI Server Compute Modules

Specs Of Each Module Are:
2x Intel Xeon 2.53GHZ
8GB Ram

[dhoward_westexetc]

OK cool so it sounds like your OK for Hyper-V 1-4. Two VMs for each of those is about right if you give each VM 3 GB RAM (leaving 2 GB for the host OS).

You need another Domain controller (two is the minimum really, so make server 7 on Hyper-V 4 another DC as well as the failover DHCP/DNS).

Perhaps consider doubling the RAM on Hyper-V 1-4 to give another couple of VMs on each of those (if you plan to install 2008 R2 Enterprise server on those)? They look quite modern servers so the processors would probably handle them if they were quad cores. Are they Quad cores or dual cores?

Backup - do you have an off-site solution (eg. through LEA?) Its best to have an off-site as well as an on-site solution.

Just noticed that you are already Exchange 2007, so that is OK!

[dhoward_westexetc]

Looking further at your document, I also recommend the following:

- The apps (Wordshark etc) on your current Server 7 could ideally be on a separate Hyper-V VM.
- A RAM upgrade of the Hyper-V servers could also allow the VLE server to be virtualised?

What are your plans also for file storage on the Hyper-V system? Will they be on the same servers as before or do you plan to purchase a new file server?

[pritchardavid]

OK cool so it sounds like your OK for Hyper-V 1-4. Two VMs for each of those is about right if you give each VM 3 GB RAM (leaving 2 GB for the host OS).

You need another Domain controller (two is the minimum really, so make server 7 on Hyper-V 4 another DC as well as the failover DHCP/DNS).

Perhaps consider doubling the RAM on Hyper-V 1-4 to give another couple of VMs on each of those (if you plan to install 2008 R2 Enterprise server on those)? They look quite modern servers so the processors would probably handle them if they were quad cores. Are they Quad cores or dual cores?

Backup - do you have an off-site solution (eg. through LEA?) Its best to have an off-site as well as an on-site solution.

Just noticed that you are already Exchange 2007, so that is OK!

Right backup sever, has I said before I could not logon this, but have now got it working, so I right down tomorrow what roles it has and what software is installed

I believe how backup server has scheduled tasks using robo copy to copy files onto the the backup files from the server, so for example if a students deletes their work we can just go onto the server and restore it without mucking around with tapes. It does more than the students work of course, does the all the hard drive on all the server I believe.

All we use the Symantec Backup Exec 12.5. Thats gets a full backup everyweek and daily differential, using a tape loader

Pretty sure thats how it works

How would we go round backing up VMs?
Should we look into the DPM from microsoft, has Back Exec 12.5 doesnt work on 2008 R2 right


Domain Controllers - Yer defo wouldnt leave it has one, we have 4 atm

Yer ram upgrade sounds a good idea

Sure the processer is up the job if we used 4 vms with 16GB?

Pretty Sure We have two quads in each module, looked in task manger, it shows 8 processors, or should it show 16? (If it had hyperthread running? Is there any easy way to tell if we have two in there?

How to you make a failover dhcp? Has you know we have a few servers thats has DNS installed and running. How do you do this for DHCP? I heard that you shouldnt have two DHCP roles running, can you select failover when installing a second one?

Would you sugguest having those DNS & DHCP in it own VM & nothing else running or whould that be a waste?

Actually I dont think the server that exchange 2007 would be any good, has of coursse I'll upgrade this to 2010 version which requires more ram, which I think that server has just got the minium for excance 2007

I'll check the specs of the other servers tomorrow

[pritchardavid]

Looking further at your document, I also recommend the following:

- The apps (Wordshark etc) on your current Server 7 could ideally be on a separate Hyper-V VM.
- A RAM upgrade of the Hyper-V servers could also allow the VLE server to be virtualised?

What are your plans also for file storage on the Hyper-V system? Will they be on the same servers as before or do you plan to purchase a new file server?

Yer if we upgrade the ram, thats one thing I would do for the VLE server, after that, can be a test server to test stuff on, so the server aint wasted

Why would would you suggest for file storage?

Was thinking of just putting it in a VM, profile & appdata doesnt matter anymore, tomorrow gonna attempt to change all the accounts to mantory profiles so thats quite a lot of space saving there (Not that were running out of space) should be easier on the hard drive, profiles will be a lot smaller than roaming profiles

What was you thinking about storage mate? I dont really know much about the ways you can do that

[jsnetman]

I like hyper V and have experimented with server VM's and think it is the way to go. But I'm an old dog and prefer my main server roles on physical hardware. Ok for the odd print server or application server I think this is fine at the moment. I had a couple of server roles on VM's running and decided to team the 4 nics on each physical server, hyper V did not like this and MS say they don't support it yet in Hyper V. So i'm waiting for maybe a few more months before I put all my eggs into one basket/server.

[pritchardavid]

Ok sorry for me being an idiot

what extually is the applkication server role used for? Trying to decide what VMs to put it in, but really aint helping, has im not sure what it does for what using it.

Ok updated the first post if anyone wants to suggust where to put the other role and software left, i uploaded the document in this post to show you whats left

Also another question to add to that

If we was to change the servers, would i just be a case of moving the VMs to that or would it require making new VMs has its different hardware? I know the microsoft virtual pc didnt use the samer hardware (virtual) has your computer, wondering if this is the same in hyper v if you understand what I just said?


The bad bit about hyper v at the moment, is I cannot test it out, all our servers are running 2003 r2 so cant even test it out if I wanted, once i upgrade I need just to get it running

[jsnetman]

An application server is where all your applications reside and don't require a local install on the clients (they run from the server) or they require a client/server setup. You could also class your deplyoment share where all yor MSI's are residing and pushed out via AD or another solution.

[dhoward_westexetc]

Right backup sever, has I said before I could not logon this, but have now got it working, so I right down tomorrow what roles it has and what software is installed

I believe how backup server has scheduled tasks using robo copy to copy files onto the the backup files from the server, so for example if a students deletes their work we can just go onto the server and restore it without mucking around with tapes. It does more than the students work of course, does the all the hard drive on all the server I believe.

All we use the Symantec Backup Exec 12.5. Thats gets a full backup everyweek and daily differential, using a tape loader

Pretty sure thats how it works

How would we go round backing up VMs?
Should we look into the DPM from microsoft, has Back Exec 12.5 doesnt work on 2008 R2 right


Domain Controllers - Yer defo wouldnt leave it has one, we have 4 atm

Yer ram upgrade sounds a good idea

Sure the processer is up the job if we used 4 vms with 16GB?

Pretty Sure We have two quads in each module, looked in task manger, it shows 8 processors, or should it show 16? (If it had hyperthread running? Is there any easy way to tell if we have two in there?

How to you make a failover dhcp? Has you know we have a few servers thats has DNS installed and running. How do you do this for DHCP? I heard that you shouldnt have two DHCP roles running, can you select failover when installing a second one?

Would you sugguest having those DNS & DHCP in it own VM & nothing else running or whould that be a waste?

Actually I dont think the server that exchange 2007 would be any good, has of coursse I'll upgrade this to 2010 version which requires more ram, which I think that server has just got the minium for excance 2007

I'll check the specs of the other servers tomorrow

I would have to agree about putting DHCP/DNS and AD onto the baremetal, this is what I was going to do if we move to 2008 R2, then put other roles onto Hyper-V VMs. There are some considerations about running AD in virtual machines, it is probably easier to just put AD onto the host servers then use the VMs for one or two roles each. 3 DCs is usually fine.

DHCP/DNS - use failover clustering in Enterprise server.

On a brief checking your servers support 5100-5400 series Xeons, based on Core architecture, these do not have hyper-threading. Only the 5500/5600 Xeons support hyper-threading as these are based on Nehalem/Westmere architecture. Two quads = 8 cores, so you are seeing the right number.

On checking the Exchange requirements calculator a typical Exchange 2007 server would require about 12 GB RAM, based on the average twin quad core CPU and about 1500 mailboxes.

[dhoward_westexetc]

For storage something like a NAS device, or a disk enclosure attached to a server via external RAID card (eg. Dell PowerVault or equivalent). Something that you can put about 12 hot-swap HDDs in, configured in RAID-6 for two-drive failover.

Anyone else have any suggestions for storage?

[dhoward_westexetc]

I like hyper V and have experimented with server VM's and think it is the way to go. But I'm an old dog and prefer my main server roles on physical hardware. Ok for the odd print server or application server I think this is fine at the moment. I had a couple of server roles on VM's running and decided to team the 4 nics on each physical server, hyper V did not like this and MS say they don't support it yet in Hyper V. So i'm waiting for maybe a few more months before I put all my eggs into one basket/server.

What is the number of NICs that Hyper-V supports then? I was thinking of two/three NICs connected if we move to 2008 R2, one for host services and two for Hyper-V.

[tmcd35]

Just skimmed through this thread and have some initial thoughts -

7 Hosts! That's quiet a number, I thought virtualisation was about reducing server count. Which leads to the question - what are you planning on getting out of virtualising everything?

Are you looking at getting a NAS/SAN at some point to centrally store all the VM's on so they can be run from any machine if the need ever arises?

Are you looking at buying a new uber-server at some point to replace 2 or 3 of the older models?

Not sure about virtualising Citrix. Or Exchange for that matter. I'd certainly think about leaving those as bare metal machines, or indeed being the last to be virtualised way down the line.

I've been looking into this a lot lately (getting ready to do something similar over the summer) and there's no real way around it. To run Hyper-V hosts you really do need a barematel Domain Controller.

You should have atleast 2 DC's. Ideally both will be Global Catalogue servers with DNS role as well. I'm going for 1 physical DC/GC/DNS/DHCP server and 2 virtual DC/GC/DNS servers. The virtual servers will have a DHCP role installed but disabled incase I need it in an emergancy.

Before virtualising have good look at each servers performance stats. I'll bet good money that if you're not carefull you'll over allocate RAM/processor cores to each VM.

As a rule of thumb the majority of Server VM's I've seen would work fine with 1 core and 1Gb Ram. You can alway allocate more later if the server really needs it. A 4-core 8Gb host could probably run 4 or 5 servers without any problems. When you look at a new modern 8-core 24Gb host then theres not reason, depending on roles of the servers, why you cant run as meny as 12-18 servers on that one box.

Also doublecheck server licensing - Windows Standard allows 1 physical + 1 virtual, Enterprise 1 physical + 4 virtual, Datacenter 1 physical + unlimited virtual. If you need to buy new licenses then it's worth looking at Datacenter.

[dhoward_westexetc]

The thing that comes to my mind with virtualisation is that it allows roles to be more isolated, if one causes a problem it does not necessarily bring the whole network down. The VLE moving to a VM would retire that older server.

1 GB RAM seems mighty tight to me for a 2008 R2 VM, 2 GB I think is the bare minimum for one role (the OS itself uses about 600 MB of that RAM), 3-4 GB for two-four roles per VM.

Would definitely agree with leaving Citrix and Exchange on bare metal, unless they are uber-servers. I'm still of the mind that DCs, DHCP & DNS should be only on bare metal though.

For the future definitely consider 3-4 new high spec servers, RAM of 24-36 GB, plus NAS/SAN for storage.