Big Systems upgrade planned for this year (help)

[sacrej]

Ok So this year we are planning a major upgrade to server 2008 R2 across the board (hopefully), most of our servers are currently running 2003 or 2003 R2 I will list the roles per server below before I carry on...and yes most of our servers are named after the simpsons (not my choice).

 

Moodle2: Web server, Sophos management point

Sideshow Bob: Terminal Server for staff/thin clients

Lisa: DC1, DNS1, DHCP1, Print

Bart: DC2 DNS2 DHCP2, File Server

Maggie: Exchange 2003, Zenworks middle tier

Homer: Zenworks Qstore, App, drivers and image storage

Barney: ISA Server

Marge: Sims

 

We want to move all of our servers to VM's probably on 3 x IBM servers (dual quads and 32gb ram) connected to a SAN and will use Hyper-V to manage, each server will have a copy of 2008 R2 Data centre.

 

we dont have masses of money to spend as we also have to buy projectors and workstations this year, but do you think the proposed hardware will be up to the job for those roles, by the way we have about 1000 +/- students on roll, about 300 desktops, 50 thin clients and 120 staff laptops.

 

below I have listed the proposed configuration for our new physical (and VM) server

 

Server1 Roles

 

VM1 DNS1

VM2 DC1

VM3 DHCP1

VM4 Thin Clients Terminal Server

VM5 SQL Server (CfgMgr, Sharepoint, etc)

 

Server2 Roles

 

VM1 DNS2

VM2 DC2

VM3 DHCP2

VM4 CONFIG MANAGER 2007R2

VM5 SOPHOS

VM6 Sims.NET

 

Server3 Roles

 

VM1 Exchange + Web Access

VM2 Terminal Services

VM3 ISA/Forefront (Web Access)

VM4 Sharepoint Services

VM5 Print Services/Pcounter

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Finally there are only two of us, and we have never done anything like this before, so any suggestions/time scales/useful resources (other than technet)?

 

Thankyou

[Mr.Ben]

In my previous place of work it became a nightmare when we started using VM's as you couldn't immediately identify which VM was on which server.

 

When I started here I built the network from scratch, so a decent naming convention was used!

 

Physical Servers are named..

 

SITENAME-PSRV-A

SITENAME-PSRV-B

SITENAME-PSRV-C

 

 

And they have there 'children' Virtual Servers (which should typically run on their parent Physical server)

 

SITENAME-VSRV-A1

SITENAME-VSRV-A2

SITENAME-VSRV-A3

 

SITENAME-VSRV-B1

SITENAME-VSRV-B2

SITENAME-VSRV-B3

 

SITENAME-VSRV-C1

SITENAME-VSRV-C2

 

It's a far easier system to remember than having god knows how many planets and there moons. Was good in pub quizzes though.

 

Each box can support another VM, but it's nice to have the redundancy, so that if I have a failure I can bring them up on another.

 

We can't quite afford the fancy kit to migrate them on failure yet!. I'll wait for BSF to get me!

 

What timescale would you be looking at? - I'm in the process of moving servers to 2k8 R2 as well - the VM's hosted above are all 2003 on a VMWare server

 

I'm planning a move to Hyper-V in the summer, and clients will be moved room by room to Windows 7 - Admitedly I'm cheating as I will create a new domain and a trust relationship between the two.

 

Unless you have a huge network, I'd combine DNS/DHCP and the DC roles into one VM, maybe with a DHCP split between two servers of 60/40

Edited March 3, 2010 by Mr.Ben

[sacrej]

oh rolling out windows 7 as well (on compatible hardware)...lol (all workstations are xp sp3 at the mo)

 

we've basically got easter and the summer holidays, though there will be other jobs to do in the summer too... we dont need to be finished by then, but I would at least like to have the main infrastructure roles completed by then.

 

basically in terms of staffing, my manager has been off for nearly a year (unknown reasons) so myself and the other techy have been left with everything they used to do, I dont know when or if they'll be back so for the moment we'll just have to presume there will be the two of us.

 

I'm a bit concerned that I will kill something, lol....

 

which roles would you migrate first?...DC? DNS or DHCP? or those three at the same time.

 

and is it relatively easy to migrate data from 2003-08R2?

 

I agree with you on the naming conventions, that makes much more sense.

[Guest Guest]

Why seperate the roles up that much? Just because you can? You've got to remember windows uses its own resources just to run, so putting only one service on each seems very wasteful to me. (Im assuming HyperV doesnt do memory sharing like vmWare). eitherway there will stilll be waste.

 

I like the idea of keeping your external services and gateway on one box, thats what we've done.

 

Things i would recommend;

 

I cant stress this enough, i really cant, we've been bitten by it. You NEED a fast SAN and SAN switch. You high HD IO services are obviously fileserver, SQL (sims), exchange, to a point TS...

 

Have a look at the Sun Storage 7000 series. I dont know how long the offer will last but we have just ordered a 7110 at around 66% of the book price. The forum member Duke has pointed me at looking at using it directly as our fileserver using its CIFS service. So far it looks bloody brilliant! You can use the windows MMCs to manage its shares, view its event logs, and even use the previous versions client with it!!!

 

Have a look at Citrix Xenserver. Its much more mature than HyperV, is free, and has most of the features of vmWare.

[sacrej]

this is one of the san's we are looking at

IBM System Storage Storage DS3200 : Overview - IBM System Storage Disk Systems - United Kingdom

[Guest Guest]

this is one of the san's we are looking at

IBM System Storage Storage DS3200 : Overview - IBM System Storage Disk Systems - United Kingdom

 

Looks good. If you arnt already push for SAS over sata, and populate all 12 bays. This is going to run everything!

[HMCTech]

If you are upgrading the domain and forest level to 2008 R2 do some research on how it will effect exchange. We did this and it took two days to fix.

[Mr.Ben]

Agreed with J17 on the combining roles -

 

Here's how the VM's will pan out for me

 

A1 - DC, DNS, DHCP

A2 - SIMS.Net and associated Shares, BSquared (another assessment system)

A3 - File Server (Staff)

 

B1 - DC, DNS, Print Server

B2 - Application File Server, Imaging and Deployment Roles (I use SpecOps)

B3 - File Server (Pupils)

 

C1 - WSUS, Sophos, Spiceworks

C2 - Moodle, Xibo etc

 

Admitedly I'm quite a small School - we don't have Exchange internally (the licensing cost vs RM Easymail for 300 users is too much) and our VPN connections are handled by a SonicWall Box.

 

I'm using Easter - Summer as Development & Training Time, with a deployment in the Summer.