northeast_technician Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 Hello, I have just purchased 2 new servers for school, question is should I virtualise them through hyper v or is there little need to in primarys and just run everything on the actual servers themselves. I am wanting to print, run active directory, wds and wsus any advice?
andydis Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 how much ram do they have? if you can virtual is the way forward
northeast_technician Posted June 2, 2015 Author Posted June 2, 2015 32 gig in each sever what is the benefit of going virtual
ITGURU Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 If for primary with a small number of staff/students then virtual probably isn't an issue and easier to maintain. However, once you get to large secondary schools I much prefer to stay physical for the majority for performance/redundancy.
mavhc Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 Always virtual, for everything. Easier backups, easier partitioning of applications, easier to move to new hardware, easier to install virtual appliances. 1
3s-gtech Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 Virtual gives you huge flexibility. Being able to create a new VM to test a new system, piece of software etc just allows you to have a much more modular layout, so that you don't end up with extraneous services installed on your DCs for instance. Backup and recovery is also greatly simplified. Virtualisation allows you to better leverage your hardware - powerful modern servers are just idling doing most tasks in a school, so putting the hardware to better use. Reduced overall risk due to individual server failure (for instance, a dodgy update or false positive AV update). Honestly, I see no reason not to virtualise two new servers. It's easy for me to say with Datacentre licenses, but even with Standard it's worth it.
tmcd35 Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 If possible, I'd virtualise if only because it makes future hardware upgrades a lot easier to manage. You can also segregate services off in to their own servers AD, File, Print, WSUS+WDS - so they are less likely to interfere with one another and allow for easier software/os maintenance in the future. Given the RAM, I'd spec a series of VM's on each host to use no more than 14Gb between them - more than enough for that handful of servers. The only other questions revolve around processor cores and hard drive space. You pretty much need quad core on each host, min, for this to be effective.
mikkydoos Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 (edited) Yep do it. The main benefit to VM'ing is the utilisation of a single server machine. You could run a few servers with much lower RAM or hard disk overhead. E.g. Server one could host a DC, print server, MIS server. Server two could host your 2nd DC, WSUS and WDS, depending on available disk space. A separate physical file server and you're away. Click of a mouse to roll back to a working system in the event of a software failure on any of the VM's servers. Takes minutes. OR You could run everything on one server and replicate it on the other for redundancy - depending on spec of course. It took my primary down from 11 physical servers to 4, and one of those is a firewall. It will be 3 when I get my new hard disks. Works a charm and is extremely reliable. Edited June 2, 2015 by mikkydoos
mavhc Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 Next question is what base OS to use, HyperV Core? Windows? ESXi? Xen? Anything else?
Sagima Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 I'd go with 2012r2 hyper-v with gui. Datacenter edition if the price makes sense for you. You can split your vms between the servers and have them fail over to the other one in the event of a problem.
sted Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 bear in mind with server standard you only get 2 vm lics iirc (and that's if the base is doing nowt but being a base so im told as I keep wondering about datacentre its horribly more expensive even to schools). as to base os it depends what youre comfortable with id rather have a full server 20xx base os with gui so if worst comes to the worst ive got a useful console I can attempt to fix things on rather than just having command line access and then for anything else using a management station but that personal preference and wastes hdd/ram
tmcd35 Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 The question of which base OS depends on how many physical CPUs (not core count - physical processors) the servers have, and how many VM's total you want to be able to run. 2xWindows Standard per server will net 4 VM's per server, or 8 total. 1xWindows Datacenter per server should cost about the same and net unlimited VM's across both servers.
CAWJames Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 Another vote for virtual, plus with 2 hosts, you can have a 2012R2 cluster and give yourself some redundancy too I love being able to shift my victuals to one host and then reboot the other and vice versa!
theeggmaster Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 Definitely virtual. I've used VMWare in the past, but I'm now using Hyper-V on Server 2012 R2 Core and it works brilliantly.
mikkydoos Posted June 3, 2015 Posted June 3, 2015 Next question is what base OS to use, HyperV Core? Windows? ESXi? Xen? Anything else? I personally use VMWare Esxi but I think its a bit over the top for a SMB setup. It can get very complicated. I'll be going to Hyper-V before long. Especially as it is mostly covered by EES licensing.
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