School Server and infrastructure revamp

[mrbios]

Hi all;

 

I have been given the chance to give our secondary school a revamp and to replace the server room with something more robust. I have been suggested to set aside 30k to replace or add the following:

 

2 x Windows 2008 DCs

1 x Fileserver / Printserver (current storage for teachers and students 1TB)

1 x SIMS Server

1 x DPM 2007/2012 Server

1 x SCCM 2007 / SCCM 2012 Server

1 x Hyper-V (to virtualise old Intranet Server,Impero Server and maybe a Virtual DC

 

We will carry on using our Exchange 2010 (on new hardware) keep the QSAN P300Q iSCSI 12 TB SAN (most likely to the DPM 2007/2012 for backup storage), I have a Tanberg LTO5 library Drive that I'm thinking whether to sell on or keep in the network for archival, rest of old servers are Q6600 with Consumer SATA 7200rpm Drives thats been running the network of 1100 students and 150 staff, have been told by a few suppliers that I need to spend super duper money to handle a potential increase to an extra 150 sixth form students on top of the next term...

 

What do you guys think?

 

You only need 3 servers to run that lot, easily.

 

3 x Dual CPU / 24-36GB ram servers - DISKLESS!

2 x iSCSI SANS (two not a requirement but handy for redundancy if they were replicated storage)

 

Install vmware ESXi on to internal pen drives for the servers, allocate iscsi storage from one of the SANs to the virtual hosts, have the other SAN in another locaion (ideally another server room in a different building if this is possible) replicate the storage and run backups to tape from that location.

 

What was your reasoning behind allocating £7k for a file and print server? 4GB-6GB ram and 1 cpu allocated via virtualisation would cope with that job fine. Also DCs, even on 2008R2 need only 1GB ram and 1 cpu, wouldn't be worth chucking £5k at two DCs. Finally people will recommend you making one DC it's own physical host but you really don't need to, literally everything you've listed can sit on 3 virtual hosts quite happily.

 

I could make a post 3 pages long to explain my suggestions behind all this if i had the time, just please consider everything very carefully before you purchase becuase the figures you posted in your 2nd post in this thread would be completely piddling money up the wall.

 

EDIT: just went back and read some other bits, this really needs to be a very phased upgrade over the course or 1-2 years, you mention wireless solutions etc but that should be a final thought. Get the switching upgrades done and get the network traffic managed efficiently first.

 

EDIT2: That DL380....rip the 8 x SAS drives out and use them for the SAN, completely wasted in a single server.

Edited January 8, 2012 by mrbios

[steve]

We run SIMS with hyper-v using vhds with no issues. One for the OS, one for the sims data.

 

If going down the local storage for vhds, I'd see if you could split the 8 into a single raid 1 mirror for the OS and a raid 10 for the vhds. Check if you could move the 6x raid 10 drives on mass to another G7 in the event of server failure.

[MrWu]

We run SIMS with hyper-v using vhds with no issues. One for the OS, one for the sims data.

 

If going down the local storage for vhds, I'd see if you could split the 8 into a single raid 1 mirror for the OS and a raid 10 for the vhds. Check if you could move the 6x raid 10 drives on mass to another G7 in the event of server failure.

 

Thanks Steve;

 

Do you use a fixed size for your OS and SIMS VHD? ...If I mirror the OS and RAID 10 the rest I will have about 900GB of storage left (I'm hoping to add at least 2 more VMs locally) However, my SIMS database is less than 4GB at the moment.

[steve]

We set drives to be dynamic with a limit of 127GB.

 

Most stuff doesn't get beyond 20GB. SIMS has grown with docstorage, FMS, SIMS, local backups, etc to about a 100GB vhd but now has plenty of free space after a good tidy up.

 

All 20+ servers we have (excluding file storage but including exchange) don't take up more that 800GB.

[gshaw]

Proliant DL380 all the way

 

We've got 3 of them, 36GB RAM each running VMWare and they're lovely bits of kit. If you can find the extra £££ to get the 380s over the 360s you've got a bit more expansion potential if you need to add more NICs etc later on. Also seem to run a bit quieter but don't quote me on that!

 

Again if you have space \ budget replicated SANs would be ideal for DR, if you go with Veeam as your backup solution you could add a 4th VMWare host alongside the 2nd SAN for full DR but depends on how much £££ you have to play with.

 

For starters get some sort of capacity planner on your existing network to see where the IOPs are going, which will help to plan your disk requirements for any new kit... servers are the easy part, the most vital area is the storage and will cause you a world of pain if you get it wrong

[MrWu]

Hi Guys,

 

Been slowed under but thought i will do an update so far...

 

Over Feb half term we have:

 

Installed DPM 2010, linked to 12TB SAN and the LTO autochanger,backing up all our Exchange,SQL and fileservers nicely,with 5TB to spare.

 

Installed WSUS and impero on Hyper V

 

Forefront installed on all servers, replacing Sophos and MSE (sometimes even installed together!) will manage this under SCCM install...on the to do list

 

All servers on UPS, exchange and DC off the cheapie B&Q powerstrip!

 

MDT 2010 built, hopefully to integrate into DMS Netflow AD managment Software.

 

Still documenting the mish mash of fibre and copper interconnects, trying to get the network off daisy chaining and more of a star layout from the core switch.

 

I have now been allocated £34k for servers now, so still looking at solutions, one of which is the intel modular server:

 

Intel® Modular Server

 

Have been quoted one of these with 6 server modules, 4 with dual Hex Core Xeon with 48gb... 2 with single Hex Core with 24Gb, 4x300gb 15k SAS and 10x900gb 10k SAS..for around £25k. I have seen a school with this and feedback have been good,my only concern is the disk space, the school uses 3tb of data already, so might convert the DL 380 G7 i have into a fileserver and bond the 4 nics together, i could build a couple of these if needed. Incidently, if you guys virtualise fileservers, do you use fixed disk or passthrough for performance?

 

Still looking at the SAN and DL380 VM host option though, although the intel multiflex does look quite tidy.

 

Oh i have to get all this revamped with the whole school wireless by end of summer 2012!