[sims] Virtualise SIMS

[techie08]

Hi

 

Not sure if this has been covered or indeed done but can i virtualise sims in VMWare ESX and secondly would captia support it in a virtual environment?

 

Thanks

[EduTech]

We currently have SIMS Running on a Virtual Machine Running on VMware Server.

 

I have never had any problems with it running on a virtual machine; in fact staff said they have seen an improvement in the speed of SIMS since we have virtualized it.

 

Our SMIS Team support Virtualisation, not sure about capita

 

James.

[DrPerceptron]

Why wouldn't capita support it? for all intensive purposes, it is a physical machine... unless they specifically ask to see it.

 

As far as I can tell, we still get support from Capita with ours, but we're also a partner school too...

[FN-GM]

My last school had it running on ESX 3.5 in a production environment. Captia will support it as at the end of the day as far as Windows and Sims is concerned it doesn’t know its virtual.

[vikpaw]

I'm considering doing this to create some redundancy and make a failover instance available.

 

Is it hard to do / setup??

[FN-GM]

I'm considering doing this to create some redundancy and make a failover instance available.

 

Is it hard to do / setup??

 

What VM setup do you have?

 

If you have it in place all you need to do is get sims running on the server in the usual way. To do this you could use VMware converter.

[ZeroHour]

I'm considering doing this to create some redundancy and make a failover instance available.

 

Is it hard to do / setup??

Is this to protect from hardware failure or the virtual image's edition of windows crapping out?

[vikpaw]

@FN-GM - No current setup. Have just been playing with VMware fusion on MAC to run, Windows with SIMS, Vista and Win7.

 

I managed to crash it on day 1 and have even blue screened virtual XP with hardware like faults! M$ got some serious issues

 

@ZeroHour - BOTH! Also to be able to run updates in a test environment and troubleshoot before going live.

 

I'm just learning our setup over here. I only found out yesterday that you can run SOLUS from any PC. At my old place we were forced to only do things on the server and only using the custom tools from our custom support team.

 

Ric_ told me at BETT he's using ESX i believe... i may have to trade some Davidoffs for a how-to guide....

[oggster]

We vistualised SIMS at my last school too using ESX. I agree with other posts that it seemed to run better on a vitual than physical server. We were supported direct from Capita and it didn't affect our support.

There was nothing special needed when converting either. We stopped the SQL services converted and then started them on the virtual, no one knew we'd even done it.

[vikpaw]

How does that conversion work?

Does it just make a copy of your system and inject it into the virtual server? Is it the whole server, OS + SIMS?

 

I want to test it out, but still leave the existing installation in place while i play around with it...

[oggster]

Basically when you run the converter software point it at the VM host machine tell it what size hard disk you want, how much memory and how many processors (these can be changed later if you wish) and then start the conversion.

On the VM host machine a new vm appears and the conversion starts. Once finished you can play until your hearts content.

It converts the whole server intact, so any software issues you had on the physical server will appear in the Virtual version. Obviously you need to be careful with names and IP addresses if you have the physical server running.

 

You can also snapshot your virtual server and revert back should any software update go wrong. This process takes seconds (ok maybe a few mins!) to do.

 

P.S. I think I am going to be at the user group meeting in Dubai so it will be good to meet you.

[Ric_]

I'm running SIMS on Citrix XenServer... it works well... very well. Our old SIMS box was rubbish so the new virtualised instance flies in comparison.

 

I didn't do a P2V conversion because I wanted a nice clean install (and my old box was still ruunning 2000 so an upgrade would have been needed anyway).

 

@vikpaw: How many HOWTO guides would you like?

[ZeroHour]

Hyper-V is awsome Vik and you get free clustering

I have it setup here and its awsome tbh. You can move live running images around easily.

[Ric_]

Hyper-V is awsome Vik and you get free clustering

I have it setup here and its awsome tbh. You can move live running images around easily.

 

Is it awsome? (aka awesome)

[ZeroHour]

Its so good that is does not need the "e", you already know exactly how brillnt ( ) it is

[vikpaw]

I'm running SIMS on Citrix XenServer... it works well... very well. Our old SIMS box was rubbish so the new virtualised instance flies in comparison.

 

I didn't do a P2V conversion because I wanted a nice clean install (and my old box was still ruunning 2000 so an upgrade would have been needed anyway).

 

@vikpaw: How many HOWTO guides would you like?

 

How many Davidoffs would you like? (you have to collect from walton hall though!)

 

Thanks for the answers lads.

 

XenServer is expensive and i'm on a budget. Need to do a proof of concept first.

 

Hyper-V is from Win2k8 server right? I'm not sure we want to go there yet. I'm assuming it's free though..?

 

I like the idea of just converting what we currently have into ESX and trying out some updates.

 

@Oggster - not sure i can make it to Dubai, have to beg the SLT for permission. And they even set the date based on when i could make it!

[ZeroHour]

You do get P2V for hyper-v also. SCCM can do it as well as converting ESX to hyper-v I believe.

Yeh Hyper-V is free with server 2008 and so is the clustering stuff (enterprise edition which is what you would want as you get 4 virtual windows server lics included)

[vikpaw]

Ok so i'm looking at a proof of concept. still trying to find some hardware that can run ESX so in the meantime looking at running VMWare Server.

 

Have downloaded and installed it and also got the converter.

 

Can you / are you supposed to do the P2V conversion live, whilst it's running or should we wait until the system is not in use.

 

Also, the server has two partitions, C for system and E for data, sims folder etc. These i think are done separately via the volume copy option, is that right.. .. .?

 

Any help or tips would be great.

[Theblacksheep]

 

Can you / are you supposed to do the P2V conversion live, whilst it's running or should we wait until the system is not in use.

 

Also, the server has two partitions, C for system and E for data, sims folder etc. These i think are done separately via the volume copy option, is that right.. .. .?

 

If you are on a budget, ESXi is also free.... and has features missing from hyper-v (memory overcommit, page file consolodation, native nic teaming). LOTS of hardware can run ESXi, even my old Opteron 275 can run it at home (apart from the 3com network card). Look up both the official HCL and whitebox list.

 

Get the latest vmconverter, upto version 4 as of this week. Then as oggster said you should stop the sql service on P2V then start it back up afterwards. Pretty simple.

Edited February 15, 2009 by Theblacksheep

[vikpaw]

we've got esxi too, but trying vmware server first.

already failed at first hurdle as it wants sysprep files put in a central location, but wont see them.

[Theblacksheep]

already failed at first hurdle as it wants sysprep files put in a central location, but wont see them.

 

This is most common when the sysprep files dont exactly match the OS and service pack level.

[vikpaw]

but it's the converter package that complaining before it even gets anywhere.

 

i ripped the files from the CD. maybe the service pack was wrong

 

a colleague now has esxi running on an old lenovo, but i'm assuming we'll get similar issues on that too if we want to do a P2V conversion

[Theblacksheep]

but it's the converter package that complaining before it even gets anywhere.

 

Are you chosing to customise the VM?

 

I dont think you need sysprep if you dont customise. If you are just testing, keep the settings the same, just dont put it on the network with the old machine.

[vikpaw]

if you don't do it at the beginning i thought you have to at the end anyway as the hardware is different so it needs to be configured and the drivers set up.

[vikpaw]

Just to let you know i've done a successfully conversion of my Intranet server.

 

It took a few reboots post conversion and it looked like it had hanged but it ended up working and going through a psuedo OS install, sorting out the hardware.

 

Chose to install VMWare Tools after it was up and running, and also, joined domain afterwards too, which is what was hanging part of the setup as the network drivers were not loaded.

 

Anyway, at last it works, and once i've removed all hard coded references to the old server name it works perfectly as a duplicate.

 

The other option is to leave it and rename it when the original server fails.

So, next step, try and do the SIMs server.....