Complete NEW 2008 R2 install

[hotwired007]

I'm about to embark on a complete fresh 2008 whole school domain install... has anyone got any advice or recomendations?

 

it includes but not excusive: 2 DCs, 1 exchange, 1 SQL/Serco, 1 av, 1 file, 2 dpm... plus some others - all virtual using hyper-v...

[sted]

at this point why not use 2008r2? dosent seem worth using 2008

[hotwired007]

at this point why not use 2008r2? dosent seem worth using 2008

 

i've put it in the wrong forum!

[ChrisH]

i've put it in the wrong forum!

 

Thread moved and renamed. Practice you disaster plan before you go live.

[davipton]

Good luck mate!!

[tmcd35]

Buy into the Datacenter edition and then practice the mythical 1 server 1 role ideology - or at least as your physical hardware/server needs would allow for.

[mrbios]

My advise would be ditch hyper-v and go vmware

 

 

Good luck with it, i've recently done a similar thing myself, just not done the file server yet, dreading that bit...think i need to do it next week, doh.

[jamesfed]

I might be considering something like a Drobo box for your storage - that way you can add extra storage whenever you need

[strawberry]

are you going all virtual? I would leave dpm and 1 dc as physical.

[sted]

My advise would be ditch hyper-v and go vmware

meh i like using a full serer 08 as the base so i have a console i can use rather than cli only now i admit this is a bit wasteful of ram but i think worth it

[teejay]

meh i like using a full serer 08 as the base so i have a console i can use rather than cli only now i admit this is a bit wasteful of ram but i think worth it

 

You just install VMWare client on your workstation to connect to the VM server.

[teejay]

are you going all virtual? I would leave dpm and 1 dc as physical.

 

Why? DC's work very well virtualised, especially if you are buidling from scratch and not doing a p2v.MS used to recommend not virtualising DC's but they're fine with it now. Don't use DPM, so can't comment on that.

[Richie1972]

I'd say stick with Hyper-V and don't bother with VMWare (may be a good product, but is unnecessary complexity and very expensive, whereas Hyper-V is free with Windows).

If you go for R2, then Hyper-V supports live migration.

Create a number of physical servers and cluster them.

Get Server 2008 Enterprise (or if your budget and needs stretch to it - Datacenter) - with enterprise you can host 4 Hyper-V servers without extra licenses (or as many hosts as you like with Datacenter)

[sted]

You just install VMWare client on your workstation to connect to the VM server.

i dont have a dedicated workstation so i just have to use whatevers free using 2008 as a abse gives me a workstation

[teejay]

I'd say stick with Hyper-V and don't bother with VMWare (may be a good product, but is unnecessary complexity and very expensive, whereas Hyper-V is free with Windows).

If you go for R2, then Hyper-V supports live migration.

Create a number of physical servers and cluster them.

Get Server 2008 Enterprise (or if your budget and needs stretch to it - Datacenter) - with enterprise you can host 4 Hyper-V servers without extra licenses (or as many hosts as you like with Datacenter)

 

VMWare ESXi is free, Citrix XenServer is free, both of which are more mature products than Hyper-V and so are well worth investigating. Hyper-V has improved yes, but when I looked at all 3 just over 12 months ago, VMWare ESXi came out tops for us by quite a margin, but obviously ymmv. Test all 3, don't just go with Hyper-V because its Microsoft and is included in the OS.

[hotwired007]

I have been running VMWare ESXi with a couple NexentaStor homebrew SAN servers - it works fantastic apart from the fileserver seems to put a huge load with the high IO on it - everything was VMs...

 

I've decided that due to huge number of conflicting GPOs in my current 2003 r2 domain that it would be easier for me to completely rebuild the whol lot as part of my LEAs server refresh project and invested in a couple of HP G7 AMD servers and a SAN box - its the live migration and failover that i'm most interested in...

 

Basically i'm going to try and iliminate as much as a possibly can for single point of failure... hopefully next year i'll get a second san and set them up clustered too... - just not enough cash this time around! The DPM servers are going to be physical servers - one offsite and one in another part of the school... or both in different parts of the school. i have looked at Xen but i was recommended to go with Hyper-V as the support contract costs wil be significantly lower wth it rather than the Xen solution... CPU and RAM usage isn't one of my worries atm as the 2 servers i bought have 24x 2.2GHZ and 32GB RAM each... plus with the backup of my older G5 servers that are 4x 2.6 and 32GB RAM... the san is a 10x 1TB unit in a RAID5 array... backed up on 2 DPM servers... then onto tape (LTO2).

[mrbios]

I'd say stick with Hyper-V and don't bother with VMWare (may be a good product, but is unnecessary complexity and very expensive, whereas Hyper-V is free with Windows).

 

VMware is about as simple as virtualisation comes, hyper-vs more advanced stuff is where you suddenly get chucked in to the "unnecessary complexity" everythings just self explanitary and straight forward with VMware. (the only difficulty with VMware is getting their licensing team to do there job without it taking a month to sort out a simple upgrade of one license!)

[zippo]

From a practical point - I would include at least one x32 server. Why? Well most stations will be x32 OS and beleive me, x64 servers are a complete pain in the rear when it comes to print server duties. The x64 servers have x64 printer drivers built into them, which is fair enough. Whilst you can add x32 print drivers manually (to support your stations), it can be a complete nightmare trying to find x32 drivers for some printers - you can end up spending hours trying to source drivers for some oler legacey printers.

[hotwired007]

I've just standardised all the printers to 3 types across the school but i agree on having a seperate ps instead of hosting it on the primary dc as it is now...