Recommended Hardware for Virtualising Terminal Servers

[5tu]

Hi All

 

I am looking to implement 3 Windows Server 2008 Terminal Servers to allow students to access school software using the RemoteApps feature.

 

I need to support approx 100 concurrent users. If I opt for individual servers I am considering something like the HP ProLiant DL120, Quad Core, 4gb RAM and 2x 146SAS Drives in RAID1.

 

However, could I achieve the same performance virtualising my terminal servers on an uber server? If so what spec and RAID configuration would achieve this?

 

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

Thx.

[jamesreedersmith]

Why not just put TS on the Uber server and use it as one massive TS to support all 100 clients?

[Potato-Peeler]

If your using 3 servers is 4gb of ram really enough? The cpu should theoretically be fine but id have at least 6gb, 2 for each server.

[DMcCoy]

You may well want to look at dual quad core and one of the 6.4GT/s Nehalems. 32GB RAM, at least 4 x GB NICs. If it's just TS servers then storage would probably be ok locally. With RAID 5 you ideally need more than the minimum 3 drives, 5 would be better. Remote management/KVM is essential too.

 

It may be wise to consider two servers though, a single quad with 16GB ram would be ok then.

 

Ideally you also need to know what virtualisation software you are going to use first so you can buy supported hardware.

[5tu]

Thanks for the prompt replies. If I virtualise I'd opt for VMWare ESXi. Only driver for doing this would be £££ (as you'd expect) but want to make sure I choose the best hardware configuration.

 

Is there any advantage to virtualising multiple servers on one box rather than running one 64-bit 2008 server on an uber server?

 

As you can tell, I'm new to virtualisation and although I understand the rationale, I don't have real experience of the pros/cons for what I want to achieve!

[jamesreedersmith]

No - youd be better of running the server 2008 on the machine or multiple machines as its hhigh availability anyway due to the fact you can use a server farm and multiple hosts or highly available boxes. Adding VM in this case is an extra expense and an extra leyer of resource use and complexity.

[SYNACK]

I'd suggest using servers with dual CPUs and dual PSUs along with RAID5, this will give your setup much more robustness and futureproffing. Essentially, despite appearences the Proliant 100 series is just a gussied up workstation with a server badge on the front, slightly better PSUs and better quality motherboards but rather unconvincing when it comes to redundancy or offline managment etc. Ideally a couple of DL 300 series (380/5 360) would be a good solution with 8-16GB each and room for expantion.