Systems Center, virtualization & sharing servers

[sonofsanta]

I have gotten myself in a bit of a mental knot on this one. I'm up acronym creek without a glossary, you might say.

 

The background: setting up a new virtual infrastructure. 2 fat servers to be hosts, one lightweight to act as a physical DC, host SCVMM and run the backups on the attached LOT5 autoloader.

 

So this lightweight machine needs SCVMM on it, and needs DPM on it. DPM doesn't play nicely with SCOM, but SCOM integrates very nicely with SCVMM. I want to use SCCM as well, using proper SQL where I can.

 

As far as I can tell - and what I'm asking here is for someone to validate or correct my assumptions - SCVMM and SCOM don't need to be on the same server to integrate. As such, can I just install SCVMM, set up all the HAVM stuff, then stick SCOM on a VM and integrate from there?

 

SCCM will also want to be on a VM as well. Thinking about overheads, can I stick SCCM, SCOM and their SQL all in one VM, or am I better separating out?

 

We're only 400 hosts, and something less than a dozen VM servers at the end of it all, so our needs aren't too great, I'm just trying to wrap my head around all the different dependencies and... avoidancies... and acronyms. It's turning into the wedding reception table planning problem at this point, to be honest. Anyone done the same/similar who can shed light on this? I don't really want to have to spend a few hundred quid on an extra physical server just to connect to the autoloader, just because SCOM and DPM fell out at break time and can't sit next to each other...

[sonofsanta]

Just to add to the restrictions as well - my SCVMM download comes with the full SQL 2k8; SCCM comes with the full SQL 2k8; SCOM does not. So I think the options are: SCOM lives with SCCM and shares its SQL DB; or, SCOM sits on a separate VM and accesses the SCVMM SQL DB over the network connection, assuming integration requires them to share a DB. Except the latter worries me, as SCOM is reputedly a DB hog, and that will generate a lot of network traffic...

 

They make this fun, don't they?

 

EDIT: Or the pricey third option, an extra physical server for DPM to talk to the autoloader. I would VM DPM on the physical host, but I don't think that's a brilliant plan what with it being the primary DC.

[broc]

Dusting off an old thread.....

 

Did you eventually sort out this fine example of Microsoft product integration? I find myself in a similar position:

 

3x Hyper-V hosts running 'production' services plus a need to run a DC, SCVMM, SCOM & SCDPM somewhere other than in my Hyper-V cluster. It seems a shame to have to run several seperate servers just for System Center.

[sonofsanta]

In the end, due to DPM being such a pain (can't be virtualised as you can't pass the external SAS port through) I got another low end physical server and moved the card with the SAS port to that. I now have:

* physical server running SQL, SCOM & SCVMM (and running AD, DNS, DHCP etc. and generally treated as the secondary DC)

* two physical hosts running the VMs; one VM then runs SCCM on SQL (and WSUS, FEP stuff)

* physical server running DPM and not a lot else

 

It is frustrating that virtualisation still seems to need so many physical servers.

[broc]

Did you have any problems installing/running VMM on a DC? I have read that Microsoft don't recommend running VMM on a domain controller although I have never seen any explanation given other than they don't recommend running anything else on a DC....

 

What sort of spec did you use for the DC/SCOM/SCVMM server?

[sonofsanta]

Did you have any problems installing/running VMM on a DC? I have read that Microsoft don't recommend running VMM on a domain controller although I have never seen any explanation given other than they don't recommend running anything else on a DC....

 

What sort of spec did you use for the DC/SCOM/SCVMM server?

 

Not come across any problems yet, and don't recall any issues when installing other than the whinge in the SCVMM prerequisites checker. Works pretty well so far (just ramping up the servers to be live - the virtual DC is now the main DC, the web server and print server have been built and are being configured ready to go live, I'm just playing with SCCM now).

 

Spec is just a Xeon E5606 quad core @ 2.13Ghz with 16Gb of RAM in, not been a problem yet but then SCOM isn't doing a whole lot as yet anyway. VMM doesn't ask for much, about a gig of RAM looking at it now and not a lot of CPU.

 

For what it's worth, DPM seems to work quite well as well, and seems much cheaper than BackupExec.