Setting up new server advice please

[Jobos]

After half term I'll be setting up a new server at one of my primary schools. It's a smallish school with about 220 pupils, 85 desktops and 82GB of data stored on the old server.

 

It will be the only DC and run everything after the migration so file, print, sims, exchange and av. I'm planning to virtualize as much as I can if only for the disaster recovery side of things but I've been told different things by different people on how to configure the server so wanted to ask here.

 

Plan A was to make the host the DC and file server and virtualize the separate roles into their own machines. I'm using datacentre so no problem on licencing.

 

Plan B is to make the host standalone and virtualize the DC as well as a separate machine.

 

I know Microsoft says not to run anything on a virtual host other than hyper-v so that backs up plan B but I would like to get other peoples thoughts on this please.

[forrager]

I would advocate plan B.

 

A second virtual DC would provide redundancy and enable offline maintenance of the primary without affect service delivery.

 

Providing you have a reasonable backup solution, and assuming RAID implementation, your only real issue would be catastrophic hardware failure which would also be true for plan A.

[mslaterdws]

Personally even though I would not like it I would use the server as a standalone host server and virtualise everything.

 

You are kind of restricted with only one server.

 

Also I am assuming you are using Hyper-V for your hypervisor and that you will be using internal storage for hosting the vm's.

 

Really I would prefer to have a physical DC but with such a small setup needed and as long as it is all backed up correctly then it should be ok.

[sparr0wn]

go for esxi, not hyper-v

[Jobos]

go for esxi, not hyper-v

 

I know nothing about esxi but a fair amount about hyper-v.

[pantscat]

go for esxi, not hyper-v

 

I'm intrigued as to why you'd say this? What's the justification?

 

I'm a VMware advocate, but I'd have to say that for a small-ish school with a datacentre licence then Hyper-V would probably make more sense and would be scalable at less expense in the longer term.

 

OP - is there any chance of getting a 2nd server? I just hate the idea of all eggs in one basket!

[XiJ]

We've used a single server DC for years in our primaries. Just make we sure we have a good backup (s) solution in place.

 

I do intend to virtualise in future - using your plan B.

[Jobos]

OP - is there any chance of getting a 2nd server? I just hate the idea of all eggs in one basket!

 

As the budget is going I'm counting myself lucky to get one new server and doing the install myself is saving (of the top of my head) best part of £2k. Like I said above it's only a small school and making the saving has allowed for a bigger spend on the server itself. We had the option of moving to Openhive email and asked other schools how they are finding it but received bad feedback so chose to go with our own Exchange as we have done so for many years. I've setup Exchange 2010 at another school and although it's not a five minute job I got there and learnt a lot in the process. For information I was quoted £1000 just to install the Exchange server alone. The only question I have with regard to Exchange now is which version to go with?

[pantscat]

Ok - fair enough.

 

In that situation I'd go for Office 365 for email - takes away the hassle of running Exchange which is pretty resource hungry, even for a small number of users. Plus you get the opportunity to use SharePoint and Lync if you want to.

 

I've been trialing it here with a view to using it for our Students... it's very very good.

[sparkeh]

I have a standalone host runing hyper-v with two vm DCs. Works really well.

Of course I would love to have a san, redudant hosts etc but really its overkill in a primary.

 

Get a good backup solution, I use Veeam which is awesome.

[Jobos]

I have a standalone host runing hyper-v with two vm DCs. Works really well.

Of course I would love to have a san, redudant hosts etc but really its overkill in a primary.

 

Get a good backup solution, I use Veeam which is awesome.

 

Never thought of using two dc's like that, but would I need it with just 85 clients?

 

I use BackupAssist at another school and it's surprisingly good so bought it for this server. It's very lightweight and easy to use.

[sparkeh]

Never thought of using two dc's like that, but would I need it with just 85 clients?

Well, if you are using Datacenter then you might as well take advantage of having more than 1 DC. I like to know that everything is being replicated to another DC so if one goes down you can (mostly) carry on.