Hyper-V Install - recommendations ..

[soveryapt]

Good afternoon all

 

Right, over half term, I will be rebuilding my server that caused the "http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-server-2008-r2/70258-o-oh-bsod-server.html" thread I started.

 

Basically, there's something wrong with the server so I figured I'd take the time and rebuild it fully and get it up and running again that way.

 

However, my question is, Hyper-V and then install 2008 R2 on that? Or just install 2008 R2 as I currently have?

 

What would the advantages be of going virtual with what is currently a simple 2 server forrest?

 

Thanks all

Andy

[Ric_]

It depends how many roles your server currently has, the spec of the server and what sort of expansion you are looking at. If you have some form of shared storage (that is compatible with Hyper-V) and you think you might want to virtualise your second server then I would go for it. If you are going to keep everything the same (i.e. reinstall a virtual copy of what you already have) there is little point as you are just eating extra resources by running Hyper-V.

[soveryapt]

It depends how many roles your server currently has, the spec of the server and what sort of expansion you are looking at. If you have some form of shared storage (that is compatible with Hyper-V) and you think you might want to virtualise your second server then I would go for it. If you are going to keep everything the same (i.e. reinstall a virtual copy of what you already have) there is little point as you are just eating extra resources by running Hyper-V.

 

The server in question is a HP ProLiant ML350 G5 (Intel Xeon E5420 2.50GHz Processor) with 4GB RAM and currently RAID1 280GB. Basic, but good enough for our needs.

 

Currently, it's doing nothing much more than Exchange (which doesn't get used anyway .. meh .. waste of money there then!) File Sharing, backup and fallback DNS. It was PDC before it started showing problems so moved that off to our other server for safety sake.

 

I would look to upgrading the server and moving more things to it as the other server is a Fujitsu PRIMERGY Econel200 S2 with Intel Xeon 3.00GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, 160GB RAID1 HD. This is running WDS, Print Server, Sophos Updates and WSUS.

 

I dunno, I guess for now it's swings and roundabouts, I would love to go more virtual and have the lovely ability to save the images off and if it goes wrong, BANG, put it back right without too many hiccups (I'm right in thinking that is possible with Hyper-V yes?).

[sted]

unless you add more ram or use a baremetal hypervisor then i wouldnt bother.

[sparkeh]

Personally I think there is a strong case for virtualising a server for DR reasons. Having back up copies of your VMs safely tucked away is a good feeling.

[bart21]

Hyper v is nowhere near as good as vmwares esx. We use esx and school near us use hyper v. The nm there said moving away from vmware was the worst decision he had ever made.

[SYNACK]

Hyper v is nowhere near as good as vmwares esx. We use esx and school near us use hyper v. The nm there said moving away from vmware was the worst decision he had ever made.

 

Thats an unfair statement without supporting facts, Hyper-V is quite good and getting better all the time especially with SP1 in 5 days.

 

I would use Win server enterprise as the hosts and enable the Hyper-V role as that will give you gui on the servers as well for easy setup. You do need a bunch more ram though for both of them. I'd say min 8GB more each to make it worthwile.

Edited February 15, 2011 by SYNACK

[Hightower]

We plan to use Hyper-V here, and I have to admit I like the look of it for a free Hypervisor - it can do failover clustering for free. Would love ESX but it's a lot of money.

 

Plus, with SP1 there is dynamic memory which is one of the main features that was missing so it is getting better and better

[zag]

What would the advantages be of going virtual with what is currently a simple 2 server forrest?

 

BACKUPS

BACKUPS

BACKUPS

BACKUPS

BACKUPS...!

 

I love virtualizing stuff simply for the disaster recovery elements of it.

 

Its so easy to take a snapshot or complete image of a virtualized server. It makes those server failure moments we all dread a thing of the past. If a server does die in the middle of the night, just copy your latest image to a new hyper-v server, and and restore any recent data you've backed up. No need to configure it in any way, it should just work.

[sparkeh]

Its so easy to take a snapshot or complete image of a virtualized server.

 

Remember though, *never* snapshot a DC

[gshaw]

We plan to use Hyper-V here, and I have to admit I like the look of it for a free Hypervisor - it can do failover clustering for free. Would love ESX but it's a lot of money.

 

Plus, with SP1 there is dynamic memory which is one of the main features that was missing so it is getting better and better

 

I've been mulling this one over for weeks now and ultimately the issue I have with Hyper-V is that it's still got Windows underneath. That means we either run no antivirus on the host (risky) or run the risk of AV knocking the host out with a bad update \ scan (happened before and wouldn't be surprised if it happened again).

 

There's also the issue that NIC teaming is down to the 3rd party NIC drivers, might work fine now but all it takes is one iffy Windows Update and then there's issues. Not saying it would definitely happen but it's all these extra risks that bother me when compared to a locked down bare metal hypervisor. There's also the extra config to make the HA environment via clustering etc, needs more work to set up and make sure everything is configured correctly.

 

As long as we don't go past the 3 hosts VMWare Essentials plus isn't that expensive (around 2k), which in the scheme of server and SAN hardware costing 20k isn't a great lot...

[Hightower]

I've been mulling this one over for weeks now and ultimately the issue I have with Hyper-V is that it's still got Windows underneath. That means we either run no antivirus on the host (risky) or run the risk of AV knocking the host out with a bad update \ scan (happened before and wouldn't be surprised if it happened again).

 

There's also the issue that NIC teaming is down to the 3rd party NIC drivers, might work fine now but all it takes is one iffy Windows Update and then there's issues. Not saying it would definitely happen but it's all these extra risks that bother me when compared to a locked down bare metal hypervisor. There's also the extra config to make the HA environment via clustering etc, needs more work to set up and make sure everything is configured correctly.

 

As long as we don't go past the 3 hosts VMWare Essentials plus isn't that expensive (around 2k), which in the scheme of server and SAN hardware costing 20k isn't a great lot...

 

Microsoft provide a 'locked down bare-metal hypervisor'

[zag]

I'm always banging on about this but you really don't need anti-virus on a server these days, especially one that doesn't store user files.

 

I personally don't run any AV on any of my hyper-v hosts, I really don't see a risk of infection.