To Virtualise or not?

[MattDLEA]

The more I talk to people and read up the more people seem to be virtulising their servers.

 

Our current set up is a small primary about 30 full time members of staff, 300 students and about 45 pc's. We have one server that does everything, DC Active directory, file server, Print server and very very little software is run from it.

 

We are looking at a new server soon, My thoughts is just keep it the same but server 2012.

Is there any advantages virtualising it for this size school and use?

 

Cheers

[cpjitservices]

The more I talk to people and read up the more people seem to be virtulising their servers.

 

Our current set up is a small primary about 30 full time members of staff, 300 students and about 45 pc's. We have one server that does everything, DC Active directory, file server, Print server and very very little software is run from it.

 

We are looking at a new server soon, My thoughts is just keep it the same but server 2012.

Is there any advantages virtualising it for this size school and use?

 

Cheers

 

Well one of the best things about is cost saving as in Power usage etc... however if your only running 1 server anyway then it wont matter too much.

 

Would you be splitting roles across Virtual Servers if you went down the Virtualization route ?

[3s-gtech]

Being able to split the roles down onto separate VMs can be handy - if a VM fails, it won't take too much down and recovery can be done quickly. Upgrades to each VM are less risky to overall services, and you have flexible modularity (such as just turning off a VM when it's retired or replaced). Obviously you have the risk of the single server failing, but you could get a pair of efficient hosts or just ensure that the one is well set up with redundant features.

[Davit2005]

You'd be best splitting up the services if possible if you had enough resources on the host,

 

Personally for that size school I'd create 4 virtual servers: 2 DC's, 1 Print Server, 1 file server in future maybe add an application server for databases/applications etc.

 

Have DNS on both DC's, make sure both DC's are global catalogs and split DHCP between the 2 DC's. You will get a bit of resilience if you need to restart a server, if you lose one DC you can recover from the other if need be.

 

If push came to shove you could have 1 DC and File share on one VM and the Other DC with Print Sharing on a separate VM.

 

For even more resilience (depending on finance) add a second host and split the services between them both.

[MattDLEA]

Its something I'd never thought about to be honest as I didnt think we were big enough to warrant it.

I think possibly at a push I could get two boxes. would depend on how the licencing works.

[sonofsanta]

I'd split it just so that when something running on IIS starts playing up and needs a restart, it doesn't involve rebooting your DC as well. Server 2012 R2 has RAM deduplication so there's minimum overhead in running multiple OS instances.

 

It's also a better idea security wise having nothing but AD/DNS/DHCP running on your domain controllers, though that's less a concern in a primary than some other places. Still, if you can do a thing right, you may as well.

 

Get an AMD Opteron with loads of cores, fill it with RAM, job done. There are cheap ways of doing shared storage for a failover cluster between two servers these days, I think, but I don't know them.

Edited September 10, 2014 by sonofsanta
SND? wut now?

[pcstru]

I'd be in two minds! You do get some systems management advantages from decoupling services from a single server, but you will pay for that in having to deploy and maintain a more complex set-up. I think you would need to look at the impacts on things like backup and licensing before you take the plunge. You may find there are increased costs because you are having to run (say) backupexec (spit!) on multiple servers and if you have tape etc attached that could get unnecessarily complicated.

[Ephelyon]

If you don't have complex infrastructure requirements - and it sounds like you don't - you could look at the free Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 offering. The hypervisor itself is free (only paying for guest server OS licenses, not much under EES). Backup is cheap at £331.50 for Altaro (including the educational discount) per host. We're an ESXi shop here for our main platform but Hyper-V Server is doing a fine job hosting about ten programming VMs for the students on a box with 12 cores and 64GB RAM.

 

You can pick up some cheap refurb hardware for the job from Refurbished Servers - Desktop PCs - Workstations | bargain hardware or through @ICTDirect_Dave.

[zag]

Disaster recovery is our biggest advantage here, that scales from small primary's to huge university's.

 

I couldn't imagine life without VEEAM instant backups.

[LeMarchand]

2 of my 3 sites are similar and have virtualised (and I'd go that route on the 3rd when the server needs replacing). If nothing else, you can reboot the individual servers very swiftly and without taking everything out while it happens.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

If you don't have complex infrastructure requirements - and it sounds like you don't - you could look at the free Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 offering. The hypervisor itself is free (only paying for guest server OS licenses, not much under EES). Backup is cheap at £331.50 for Altaro (including the educational discount) per host. We're an ESXi shop here for our main platform but Hyper-V Server is doing a fine job hosting about ten programming VMs for the students on a box with 12 cores and 64GB RAM.

 

You can pick up some cheap refurb hardware for the job from Refurbished Servers - Desktop PCs - Workstations | bargain hardware or through @ICTDirect_Dave.

 

Thanks for the reference.

 

I should point out that Bargainhardware is only our private sector sales division. To get our extended warranties and 30 days credit for the same price, come to myself or through ict-direct.co.uk

[edutech4schools]

I am keeping an eye on this post as I am in the same position. Just ordered a new servers for a primary school.

 

Below are some areas that would add to the cost.

 

It is recommended to keep 1 DC on a physical box

Needing software that can backup vm's

Additional space to backup the VM's.

[edutech4schools]

Did not want to hijack this post so have created a new one http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/149167-going-virtual-hyper-v-primary-school-advice-needed.html

[JRowley]

Another +1 for disaster recovery and backup here.