Replacing Servers New setup what to do?

[browolf]

The warranties on our servers & san are up and so the school is looking into replacing them in the summer holidays.

The way they're organized is down to the last NM who took voluntary redundancy.

 

So we have almost free rein to advise how we would like new servers set up.

 

Currently our main servers are set up thus:

 

1 San split 3 ways, 1 partition for each server.

3 Servers, each a domain controller!

 

Server 1 is pdc with DHCP, Primary DNS, WINS some printers, papercut, half pupil userareas, staff-only-share

Server 2 has Secondary DNS, WINS, Some printers, Sophos enterprise console, other half of pupil areas, pupil-readonly-share, hyperv server for lucid lass, hyperv server for debian proxy

Server 3 has staff user areas, some application shares,

 

The hardware is

 

HP Storageworks P2000 with 8x600GB SAS Drives

 

2x HP Storageworks 8/8 San Switch (8GB fibre channel)

 

3x HP Proliant DL360 G6 2x146GB Drives, 12GB Ram

 

 

 

Things we'd like are adfs (AD linked to office 365) , deduplication, DHCP Failover, a more usual setup for server functionality,

But beyond that we don't know anything about virtualization, best practice etc.

 

What would you do?

Edited March 4, 2016 by browolf

[Davit2005]

The Servers are individually connected to the SAN switch which has multiple connections to multiple controllers on the P2000??

 

Are the DL360's running Hyper-V and all servers are virtual??

[dry]

Sounds like previous NM began virtualising to an extent. I'd continue down that path if I were you.

 

The Dl360 G6 is fairly old hardware now so if you've got an opportunity to replace, now may be the time to do it.

 

What budget have you got? We're potentially replacing our HP servers at the minute (they're Gen8 compared to your Gen6!) but doing so on a shoestring- have to combine what we claw back from the sale of the existing servers with the limited budget for replacement servers.

 

I've had a look at places like serversource.co.uk who seem to offer some fairly decent specced 2nd-user servers with a warranty (via serversource and not the manufacturer).

 

Having said all this, if virtualisation is all new to the current people in your team, I'd either start looking for some outside help or get reading on virtualisation technologies, which one's best for you, and what you can do with it. Otherwise you may find you get a bit stuck if you dive in head-first.

[browolf]

The Servers are individually connected to the SAN switch which has multiple connections to multiple controllers on the P2000??

 

Are the DL360's running Hyper-V and all servers are virtual??

 

 

Only server2 has hyper-v installed and it has 2 virtual servers on it, 1 for some learning support software, 1 for a proxy

 

there are no other hyper-vs or virtualized servers.

 

the SAN has 2 fibre controllers.

 

I think each san controller is connected to a san switch and then each server is connected to each switch. I'm not sure how this all functions together.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35414[/ATTACH]

[browolf]

Sounds like previous NM began virtualising to an extent. I'd continue down that path if I were you.

 

The Dl360 G6 is fairly old hardware now so if you've got an opportunity to replace, now may be the time to do it.

 

What budget have you got? We're potentially replacing our HP servers at the minute (they're Gen8 compared to your Gen6!) but doing so on a shoestring- have to combine what we claw back from the sale of the existing servers with the limited budget for replacement servers.

 

I've had a look at places like serversource.co.uk who seem to offer some fairly decent specced 2nd-user servers with a warranty (via serversource and not the manufacturer).

 

Having said all this, if virtualisation is all new to the current people in your team, I'd either start looking for some outside help or get reading on virtualisation technologies, which one's best for you, and what you can do with it. Otherwise you may find you get a bit stuck if you dive in head-first.

 

Well no it was me that set up hyper-v for 2 things we needed. The NM didnt like the idea of virtualization which is why we avoided it 5 years ago.

 

There's no specific budget for it but I expect the SMT will prefer cheaper than more expensive. However it will require the services of an external company as none of us have experience installing/configuring servers and only work term time.... The past 2 lots of servers were done by Tribune formerly Zentek.

[Davit2005]

Only server2 has hyper-v installed and it has 2 virtual servers on it, 1 for some learning support software, 1 for a proxy

 

there are no other hyper-vs or virtualized servers.

 

the SAN has 2 fibre controllers.

 

I think each san controller is connected to a san switch and then each server is connected to each switch. I'm not sure how this all functions together.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35414[/ATTACH]

 

You have the same HP SAN switches as us, the rebadged Brocades.

 

But yes it does seem like it was the intention to go virtual by the old NM.

 

I've added a few new servers to our SAN and in our case they are Zoned, each server has an alias and the controller and the individual servers are put in a Zone together. It's bewildering at first but not too difficult once you have done a few and got it documented, I only do it once a year (if we get additional blades) and still refer to my notes for backup.

 

When you say paritioned do you mean that there is a drive letter on the servers which point to a LUN on the P2000??

Edited March 4, 2016 by Davit2005

[browolf]

When you say paritioned do you mean that there is a drive letter on the servers which point to a LUN on the P2000??

 

each server has a d: drive which points to a LUN on the san.

[browolf]

How does this sound :

 

2 new servers each a domain controller running dhcp, dns, wins and hyper v and then virtualise the other functionality into a file server, a print server and a sophos+other apps server?

[mavhc]

2 servers running bare metal hypervisor, set to failover to the other one, VMs for everything. SSD boot drives on servers. Priority is ram, then SSDs

[browolf]

2 servers running bare metal hypervisor, set to failover to the other one, VMs for everything. SSD boot drives on servers. Priority is ram, then SSDs

 

is the domain controller a vm then?

[twin--turbo]

is the domain controller a vm then?

 

If I was doing it I would have a fairly minimal spec extra server as a Physical DC running all FSMO rolls.

 

TT

[snagrat]

[oQUOTE=twin--turbo;1431005]If I was doing it I would have a fairly minimal spec extra server as a Physical DC running all FSMO rolls.

 

TT

 

I wouldn't, it's a waste of money. There is no need for a physical server to run as a DC

 

I would have two servers, with SAN, running a HyperV failover cluster.

 

Make the two servers high spec so you can run 5+ virtual machines

[detjo]

I wouldn't bother with physical DC either. With Hyper-V 2012 R2 its so simple to set up virtualisation and DC's work well on there.

[browolf]

I wouldn't bother with physical DC either. With Hyper-V 2012 R2 its so simple to set up virtualisation and DC's work well on there.

 

I didn't realise DCs could be virtual. It makes sense.

[detjo]

I didn't realise DCs could be virtual. It makes sense.

 

With Server 2008 Hyper-V, DC's didn't work well at all. It was OK when it was up and running, but a little clunky! If the physical server it was installed on needed rebooting, all Hyper-V servers running on it would start up and couldn't find the DC .. which was also starting up with them! Not good!!

 

There has been huge leaps between that and Hyper-V 2012 and a shed load of further improvements to 2012R2. Now, 2012R2 is really nice and so easy to set up, and DC's on it ... just work! even if it all needs robooting. Failover is easy to set up in 2012R2 too, and works well. And it's free .. with Enterprise licence

[snagrat]

With Server 2008 Hyper-V, DC's didn't work well at all. It was OK when it was up and running, but a little clunky! If the physical server it was installed on needed rebooting, all Hyper-V servers running on it would start up and couldn't find the DC .. which was also starting up with them! Not good!!

 

There has been huge leaps between that and Hyper-V 2012 and a shed load of further improvements to 2012R2. Now, 2012R2 is really nice and so easy to set up, and DC's on it ... just work! even if it all needs robooting. Failover is easy to set up in 2012R2 too, and works well. And it's free .. with Enterprise licence

 

Failover is free with Standard license too. No difference between versions now except the number of processors

[detjo]

2 servers running bare metal hypervisor, set to failover to the other one, VMs for everything. SSD boot drives on servers. Priority is ram, then SSDs

If you have Hyper-V Server 2012R2 installed on bare metal, each VM requires a licence. If you have Windows Server 2012R2 Ent. with Hyper-V enabled and running, you can have unlimited VMs for free (you dont even have to activate them as it's auto done thru the host OS).

 

Also, If you set up 2 for failover, the hardware ideally needs to be identical.

[ITGuyWestMidlands]

If you have Hyper-V Server 2012R2 installed on bare metal, each VM requires a licence. If you have Windows Server 2012R2 Ent. with Hyper-V enabled and running, you can have unlimited VMs for free (you dont even have to activate them as it's auto done thru the host OS).

 

Also, If you set up 2 for failover, the hardware ideally needs to be identical.

 

You can run two vms from the standard licence in addition to the physical host

[Oaktech]

You can run two vms from the standard licence in addition to the physical host

 

Yes, but you can't actually *do* anything with the host OS except manage the guests under the standard licence - you can't legally add any other roles.

[Oaktech]

I'm in the process of doing a similar excercise, we are going for a pair of Lenovo X3650 with 2x 2.4ghz Xeon and 64gb ram, and a Lenovo S2200 with 14 1.2TB 10k sas drives in.

 

We currently have 5 servers scattered about, 2 are HyperV hosts but they only have 16GB ram each. We run 1 physical DC which is a microserver. It runs 2012r2 and I see no reason to change it, and one virtual DC. I'm probably going to create a new vDC and demote the existing one because the existing one is server core and therefore a PITA to administer and also has the DHCP scope set up badly on it.

 

The plan for the new servers are to have them set up in automatic failover as each server is specc'd to be capable of running our entire estate in one go. I have a plan to create a 4 disk raid 1 LUN for system drives, a 2 disk raid 1 LUN for databases and to have everything in a raid 5 for general storage. I can then P2V and V2V my current servers using the MS tools and assign the resources as required during the movement process.

[browolf]

Last year server replacement was deferred for a year. It's on this year. I need to know some companies in the northwest who we can approach about tendering a quote. We don't have the workers nor the hours to do it ourselves.

[JordanT91]

I did a similar project not long ago. I'm by myself and did it all in a couple of weeks during the Summer holidays. Hyper-V is really easy to pick up, just do a bit of reading first. You'll soon learn the things you need to know (like don't leave time sync on for the domain controllers!)

 

This is what I would do:

 

Buy two good spec servers to act as hosts. 2 CPUs, plenty of ram (at least 64GB) and SSDs in RAID 10. I'd recommend Dell because their warranty and support is good (I've never had HP servers). You should probably get at least a 3 year warranty, but Dell do lifetime technical support even if your warranty has expired (you'd just have to pay for parts).

 

Each server should have Server 2016 with a Datacenter license. The only role they should have is Hyper-V.

 

Then install virtual servers as follows:

 

VMHOST01

1. Domain controller + DNS

2. DHCP

3. PRINT

4. FILE

 

VMHOST02

5. Domain controller + DNS

(possible a second DHCP server if you do split scope)

6. Anti-virus

7. LASS

8. Proxy

 

When you get everything sorted, you may want a virtual server for SCCM/WSUS/WDS/MDT/KMS etc., another for Spiceworks, another for telecom system, another for access control system etc. You want enough RAM in each Hyper-V host to be able to failover your essential servers in case one host goes down. Ideally you could failover and run all your virtual servers on one host but the RAM required might get a bit pricey.

 

This is an ideal opportunity for your professional development. It's not very often schools have a large sum of money available for a complete overhaul. Completing a project like this will demonstrate that you are more than a toner jockey and can do system administration tasks as well as helpdesk and desktop support. Do you really need to get a company in to do this?

[mavhc]

HP don't let you access their security updates if you don't have a current warranty, iirc, super lame.

 

What's LASS?

 

I have one DC VM running AD/DNS/DHCP/File/Print/Impero/Backup/WDS at each site, one Windows server running SIMS database, WSUS, and AV, rest are linux (freepbx, ipcop, vyos, zabbix), thus hyperv core as the hypervisor. I'll be installing proxmox VE on the old server when I get chance, to run more open source stuff easily.

 

Time sync is annoying, surprising that wasn't correct by default, also weird that there's nothing about ram usage in the hyperv gui.

 

One thing to do when you're setting them up is document every step and automate as much as possible, makes it easier next time.