New server and Hyper-V

[jimbopembo]

We support 2 primary schools, Infant and Junior which are on the same site and have separate networks.

They have recently combined and are now administratively one school. We are now tasked to bringing the networks together.

Building work is being done during the summer holidays - new main office in the middle, and a fibre link between the 2 network cabinets.

The admin network will be the LA responsibility, and the curriculum ours.

We have installed 10G fibre switches in each location (Netgear GS752TXS with spare sfp+ for server)and are now planning the merge. We have an allocation of £5000 for a new curriculum server. This needs to be purchased from the LA because the LA (not the school) are paying for it, but we will responsible for config.

I am leaning towards a Hyper-V deployment, and would appreciate some advice/ pointers on the best utilisation of the existing equipment, and spec for a new server. Beyond the £5000 server allocation there is not a lot of scope for further costs.

 

Current setup:

Infant school - 1 X Fujitsu Tx100 Xeon E31220 3.1ghz, 8GB mem, 2 X 500GB Raid1, 2 X 1G ethernet

W28K R2 configured as DC, DNS, DHCP, File Server, Print Server, WSUS, backup to USB HDD

 

20 X W7 curriculum laptops, 30 X Ipads, 15 staff W7 laptops, approx. 30 W7 desktop computers.

 

Netgear WNDAP360 AP's (to be managed from WC7520 in Junior school)

 

 

Junior school - 1 X Fujitsu Tx150 Xeon E31220 V2 3.1ghz, 16GB mem, 2 X 2GB Raid1, 2 X 1G ethernet

W28K R2 configured as DC, DNS, DHCP, File Server, Print Server, WSUS, backup to USB HDD

 

60 X curriculum W7 laptops, 30 X Ipads, 15 staff W7 laptops, approx. 40 W7 desktop computers.

 

Netgear WC7520 managed WiFi

 

I intend to add WDS into the mix, and I need to consider the convergence of the Admin and Curriculum networks in a year or 2 (Sims), but I expect more funding will be available at this point.

[johnat1121]

Have you considered getting two servers putting one in each building, connecting them directly to the switches using a 10gb SFP cable and having them both as hyper-v hosts with local storage and then using hyper-v replica (built in to hyper-v) to give you redundancy in-case of a host failure. For 2.5k you can get a reasonably decent HP or Dell servers and preferably use SSDs storage. Id recommend a great blog post by @zag to give you some ideas Stable ICT systems in Schools - Blogs - EduGeek.net . You can then Re-Use the existing servers from less critical rolls like WDS and when you get SIMS later in a few years you can simply upgrade the hosts slightly.

[jimbopembo]

Yes John, thanks. That's what I am going to do.

Any pointers on VM's anyone?

[mbedford]

Hi John,

 

Sounds like you have covered most of the basics. As far as VM's are going i think that replication may be a bit of overkill. All of the services you have mentioned already have some kind of replication built in

 

DC's - Obvious, just create a multi server setup with at least 2 DC's (one on each host clearly)

DNS and DHCP - These can both sit on the DC's, very simple to get these into a farm based setup

File Server(s) - Id have two servers and look into DFS Replication and Namespace hosting (both Windows services)

Print Server - Windows Print Management or some kind of follow me printing service?

WDS - You could replicate this, but personally i see it as a non critical service which replication is just wasting space. However if you have the capacity, go for it.

 

Im not against 2012 Hyper-V replication, I use it myself, but I just think using the built in resiliency of these services will give you a better solution, most of them have automatic failover, where as replication will require a manual failover (i have tried automatic failover, its not pretty!)

 

Mike

[ITGuyWestMidlands]

Id run each dc on a seperate host and replicate them to each other. At least then you know your dcs and all the fsmo roles are fine so you can concentrate on getting everything else back up if a host were to die