New VMWare Virtual SIMS server Specification

[techy32]

we are planning to install new VMWare Virtual SIMS server and decommissioning old 2008 R2 server.

 

What are the best/recommended specification for SIMS's virtual (VMware) server like

 

no. of virtual sockets,

 

no of cores per virtual socket,

 

memory,

 

no. of NICs,

 

SCSI controller,

 

hard drives ( size & total nos ) and Disk Provision lazy/eager or thin...

 

Many thanks....

[3s-gtech]

Primary/secondary school?

Number of students approx?

Number of concurrent users?

Licensing availability for Windows Server and SQL (this can make a difference - e.g for Server 2012 R2 more than two sockets = more than one license)

 

As an example, we're a secondary with 1200 students and around 100 maximum connections.

 

Running on ESXI:

 

Two sockets, eight cores.

16GB RAM (12GB minimum loaded into SQL)

NICs - one

Running on SSDs on the host, this storage is not shared with other VMs. 200GB total. Fat disks.

[techy32]

@3s-gtech

 

exactly same setup as yours

 

secondary school

1200 students

110 staff

 

So the plan is server 2012 R2 & SQL Server 2014...

[jcs808]

Almost the same as 3s-gtech except we don't have any SSDs in our SAN and we allocated 2 sockets with 2 cores each and it all runs fine.

[3s-gtech]

With 2012 R2 you'll only need one license to cover two sockets then. Not sure about SQL Server licensing though as we're still on 2012, I think that may be the same as Server 2016 (per core, minimum count).

[techy32]

So this would be an ideal configuration?

 

Two sockets, four cores

16GB to 20GB RAM

NICs - one

2 drives

C = 120 GB

D = 300 GB

Thick provision Eager zero

 

We have windows server datacenter license

 

Many Thanks

[vikpaw]

Looks good.

Defo 4 cores, I found restarts were really slow with less than that.

Up the RAM if you can, but don't forget if you have more than one VM on the same hardware you can overallocate the RAM.