Virtual Machine Advice

[Marc_Lemar]

Hi,

 

I am after a little information please, as if I don't have enough work to do I have created myself a project to crack on with, I have just upgraded our backup software to Backup Exec 2012 and discovered that it has the capability to back up to a VM after it has done its normal backup.

 

This would be great as then there would be no downtime should a server fail I could literally fire up the VM and be back up and running (in theory), I really want to try this as we have an old server running an email relay for the finance department and I am contemplating taking it out of service before it gives up the ghost. My question is does anybody know of a good tutorial for setting up the VM and what we be the best software to use i.e. hyper-v, virtuabox etc.

 

I was thinking of running the VM on a machine with lots of RAM and big HDD's on a 2008 R2 or 2012 platform.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks.

[zag]

Hyper-V is incredibly simple to use. Just install the roll and create a new virtual machine and insert an ISO disk and setup like any other server.

 

Oh and dont waste your time with backupexec, Veeam is far better, cheaper and simpler to backup virtual machines. Its what all the big companies use these days and allows for 1 click restores.

 

Its a great weight off any network managers mind once its all installed I couldn't imagine life without virtual servers and the recovery benefits it brings.

[TomCollins]

Like mentioned by @zag, I would go for Hyper-V. It doesn't take a long time to set up and configure and if you're used to a Windows environment, it's the way to go, plus the Hyper-V role is free, so you can't complain!

 

As a relatively new technician, I don't really know what the world was like without visualization, can't imagine going back to single, physical servers again!

[zag]

As a relatively new technician, I don't really know what the world was like without visualization, can't imagine going back to single, physical servers again!

 

It was a world when a hard disk failure on a server could be catastrophic for your organization.

 

These days with 1 click virtual machine restore and snapshots, its a minor inconvenience

[thomaspark]

VMWare is also free if you are only using this on a small scale, not much config required and it has a smaller footprint to Windows.

 

I'm speaking from the point of view that we used Hyper-V and have now moved to VMWare ESXi 5. We have found we have more space to play with and have a better reliability of our hosts and vm's. ESXi 5 doesn't require much config install the OS, set the IP, download client and off you go takes under 1 hour. I'll post a video if that helps.

[Marc_Lemar]

Thanks for that guys, how are your vm's configured are they on a 2008 server platform ???

[zag]

Yes all our VMs are windows 2008 R2.