New Hyper-v setup - Exchange 2010, 2008 R2

[MRmr]

Hi you knowledgeable people, I'm hoping you can give me some advice on how to setup a new virtualised infrastructure in the charity I work for.

We currently have 2 sites (details below), approx 200 staff, which work on shifts (we operate 24/7).

 

 

Current setup:

2 sites (HQ & Branch) connected via 20Mb leased line.

 

HQ setup:

Dell 2900 Server - running Win Server 2003, DC, Exchange 2003, file (DFS) and print server, Sage Line 50, Eset AV (so its a bit crowded)

Small HP microserver - running Win 2008 R2 - SQL server express

Approx 40 desktop PCs running XP

A couple of desktops running Win 7

 

Branch:

Desktop PC - running Win 2003, DC, file and print

Approx 12 desktop PCs running XP

 

 

Hardware available for new setup:

2 x HP DL380G6 (2 cpu, 18GB RAM, 2 x 146GB 10k SAS, 3 x 300Gb 10k SAS) - initially purchased for Hyper-V hosts

2 x HP DL180G6 (don't have the spec on hand) - initially purchased for storing DPM backups

 

This hardware was purchased about 1 year ago with the plan being 1 of each type of server used as each site, but due to various different reasons I couldn't do anything with them until now.

I'd also like to keep any new purchases down to an absolute minimum.

We already have some enterprise 2008 R2 licences and due to use being a charity MS licences are very cheap.

 

 

My thoughts / plans are:

 

At HQ:

 

HyperV host using HP DL380G6 - will call it HyperV1

Maybe take a hard drive and some RAM from other DL380 ? So it could have 24Gb RAM, 2 x 146GB for host OS, 4 x 300GB RAID5 for virtual machines.

Use it to host:

VM1 -Exchange 2010 (approx 200 users, half of these are very light users, most of the rest would be medium, with a few heavy users)

VM2 - Sage

VM3 - DC with file and print server

VM4 - SQL server (or express)

 

Use a DL180 with DPM to backup these servers

 

Keep Dell 2900, keep as Physical DC & file server, Eset AV

 

At Branch:

Use a DL380G6 setup as Hyper-V host - call it HyperV2

Use it to host:

VM1 - DC with File and print

Have capacity to setup another VM to use as backup exchange server incase anything happens Exchange server in HQ

 

Use a DL180 to keep backups using DPM of the DL180 in HQ

 

 

Any thoughts on this ?

What I'm trying to achieve is all data (Exchange, network files, sage backups etc) sufficiently backed up e.g. backups from HQ stores in branch site

If anything was to happen to HyperV1 it wouldn't cripple the company.

Further down the line I'd like to move all PCs to Win 7

 

Is RAID 5 going to be OK with Exchange 2010 for the relatively small number of users ?

I'd like to use RAID 10 but that would mean purchasing more harddrives which I'd like to try and avoid if possible.

 

Anything else I've forgotten about ?

 

I'd really appreciate any help / advice you can give me.

 

Mark

[Achandler]

Firslty don't worry about Exchange and RAID 5 it will eb fien for only 200 users, and lets be honest all 200 won't be on at once if your a 24/7 operation.

 

One thign I will say to check before you go ahead is the processors in the DL380 servers, as you could have 2 x 4core (4 threads) or 2 x 4core(8 threads), the thread count becomes important as a thread can be a CPU when virtualised. So you could hyave 16 virtual CPUs or 8 virtual CPUs.

 

I would be tempted to go for 24gb (if your RAM chips allow this) and 4 x 300GB drives in the HQ like you mention, as this is the primary server.

 

Another suggestion would be maybe to use the Dell Server as well as a HyperV host, as you can then use this to run VMs from the backup should you lose your main host, obviously this would eb determined by the spec of the server.

[MRmr]

Thanks for the reply Achandler.

 

Firslty don't worry about Exchange and RAID 5 it will eb fien for only 200 users, and lets be honest all 200 won't be on at once if your a 24/7 operation.

 

Thanks thats good to know, yeah we'll probably only have about 40 concurrent users on the system at any one time.

I'll take your advice re: the 24GB Ram and 4 x hard drives.

 

Cheers

[sukh]

that config is fine, however, for Exch HA I would setup a DAG.