Would you virtualise?

[pow]

I have a Dell VTRX in a failover cluster with two nodes, works beautifully, set and forget scenario. Got about 14 VMs running across the pair, on the odd occation that one node has gone down, the email notifying me that it has is the only thing I've noticed, machines off loaded onto the other node while the other one repairs itself and then shifts them all back again!

[klop]

Thanks for the VeryPC shout out @hallb15 - are you wanting another pair of socks from @VeryPC_Colin_M

@BassTech do get in touch, with either Ed or myself and we can have a look at what we can do on a new server/s for you.

 

My socks have a hole already!

Oh yeah, also we're looking at new server options, if you would be happy to advise please drop me a PM and i'll send you our telephone number.... the server's are far less critical than the socks though ;-)

 

Thanks :-)

[DavePa]

Not read the entirety of this thread as, although I would like it to be, my job title is not "Edugeek browser" but one thing to bear in mind is that if you virtualise your DC your host cannot be a domain member (at least not on a HyperV system - VMWare may be different). It's also a good idea to delay any member servers starting by a minute of so to allow the DC to come back online. Something like DC starts automatically with the fileserver(s) starting a minute later and everything lse a minute after that.

 

Unless your HyperV host is a domain member you cannot live migrate servers from 1 host to another although with SANS and clusters this is not usually a requirement.

 

Final point about replication and DR - SANS are great but I always think DR should cover different scenarios - Physical equipment failure at the bottom of the list with loss of a server room (Fire/Flood) above that and loss of a site (aeroplane crash) at the top. Of course, in the event of the latter you probably have bigger things to worry about but sooner or later somebody is going to ask where all the work and financial records are!

[robyholmes]

Not read the entirety of this thread as, although I would like it to be, my job title is not "Edugeek browser" but one thing to bear in mind is that if you virtualise your DC your host cannot be a domain member (at least not on a HyperV system - VMWare may be different). It's also a good idea to delay any member servers starting by a minute of so to allow the DC to come back online. Something like DC starts automatically with the fileserver(s) starting a minute later and everything lse a minute after that.

 

I'd like to correct this, you can have a virutal DC and hosts on the domain as long as you have background policy updating enabled (IE not disabled as its default on). Hosts will check in with the DC once its up and running to get any new policies. If you can't authenicate then you fall back to the local admin account (IE in a failure etc). Most people including myself have a pshyical DC but really as long as you have things setup right its not required.

[PotNoodleTech]

2012R2 seems to be able to cope with virtual domain controllers better. Given that you can run a physical DC on any old lowly bit of hardware with 4 cores and 8GB ram - I don't really see the harm in keeping one around it's not as if it's going to cost you a fortune. I used an old 5 year old server that's still going. When that dies I'll probably pick up something cheap from ICT Direct.

[TechMonkey]

2012R2 seems to be able to cope with virtual domain controllers better. Given that you can run a physical DC on any old lowly bit of hardware with 4 cores and 8GB ram - I don't really see the harm in keeping one around it's not as if it's going to cost you a fortune. I used an old 5 year old server that's still going. When that dies I'll probably pick up something cheap from ICT Direct.

 

Same here. Previously done without the physical host but as we were junking the old servers I kept the smallest one and made it a DC. Belt and braces is always good.

[Sheridan]

Some of you must have better budgets than me!

 

We're still running mostly physical servers with local storage, some of the oldest have been merged as VMs onto a new server but theres never the budget to do the whole lot in one go, which means a SAN and and some decent hardware to migrate everything over.

 

Problem is, we know virtualization has its benefits, but when you have very few issues with physcial server setups its a hard sell to SLT to rip all of that out -so you carry on replacing individual physical servers on piecemeal basis!

[clareq]

The easiest way to sell to SLT is the reduction in the power bills and space the servers take up.

[zag]

Yeh i'd say virtualization is far cheaper than running physical machines.

 

Don't forget, you don't need sans or complicated setups to do this. Just a few common server machines with lots of ram.

[nicholab]

I don't know if people have seen that the number 3 in the SPC-1 is a hyper converged system running on x86 hardware using Datacore software.

 

https://www.datacore.com/best-price-performance-fastest-response-time

[Sheridan]

SLT don't care about the space (its in our office anyway) and I bet the power reductions are minimal. Don't get me wrong, I want to VM the lot! But to do it in one go its an uphill struggle. Instead I'm trying to setup 3-4 hosts (1-2 a year) and gradually have all servers running on a set of physical hosts.

[Davit2005]

20 hosts between 2 Blade Chassis both connected to EMC via FC with resilient , currently 110 Virtual Servers (Exchange DAG, 2 DC's, SQL, File servers, etc.

 

The only things Physical is one DC, backup server, few legacy servers and MAC servers.

 

We use VMWare so not cheap, maybe future versions of Hyper-V will tempt us away from ESXi.

[IT_KING]

Virtual is the future! Only problem with Virtual is when the physical machine dies it takes what ever is on that machine down too!

[PotNoodleTech]

The easiest way to sell to SLT is the reduction in the power bills and space the servers take up.

 

And if they aint impressed with that - how about an increase in reliability and enhanced disaster recovery possibilities and the ability to ensure 99.9% uptime.

[dry]

Virtual is the future! Only problem with Virtual is when the physical machine dies it takes what ever is on that machine down too!

Not if you have a sufficient failover/clustered environment.

 

I really can't see any reason why anyone wouldn't virtualise a new install in this day and age.