New Servers for Hyper-V 2012

[pritchardavid]

Hi guys can you give me your recommendations for what to buy here

 

 

 

OK I will tell you what server hardware/setup we have at the moment.

 

We have two networks, admin and curriculum. We want to merge these together, these are separated by VLAN. We have three VLANs at the momment, one for admin. Second for curriculum. Third for VOIP.

 

The servers for the curriculum network are on a Intel Modular Server Chassis (MFSYS25) and using 5 modular servers with this (MFS5000SI) you can actually put 6 of these modular servers in the chassis

 

Chassis Specs

- 14x Toshiba MBF2600RC 600GB SAS Drives 10KRPM

- 4x 1000W PSUs

- 1x Storage Controller

- 1x Networking Switch

- 1x Management Module

- Integrated Shared SAN

 

Modular Server Specs (All 5 are the same spec)

 

- 8GB DDR2 FB-DIMM(4x 2048 @ 667MHZ)

- 2x Intel Xeon CPU E5410 @ 2.33GHz (4 Cores)

We have other servers, but they are no good for Hyper-V so I won't go into the specs of them.

Other servers we have are

- 1x SIMS/FMS Server

- 1x Serco Facility & ePortal Server

- 1x Admin DC/DNS/DHCP/WDS/FileServer

- 2x Remote Desktop Servers

- 1x Backup Server (DPM)

- 1x Mitel Mobile Server

- 1x Mac Server

 

 

 

We don't have fail-over clustering enabled, we have too little RAM Hosts are 2012 Core Hyper-V with CSV storage enabled

 

What virtual servers we are running at the moment.

- DC1 - DC/DNS/DHCP/GC/FSMO Roles (2012 Server Core)

- DC2 - DC/DNS/KMS/GC (2012 Server Core)

- APP Server - Only a File Server for 6 apps atm, some just databases (2012 Server Core)

- Microsoft APP-V Server (2012 Server)

- Exchange 2010 Server (2008 R2 Server)

- File Server

- Gateway Server - RDGateway/RDBroker/RDWeb (2012 Server)

- Impero Server (2012 Server)

- Print Server (2012 Server With GUI & Tools Removed)

- SCCM 2012 - Haven't even install SCCM On this yet (2012 Server)

- SQL Server - SQL2008R2 & SQL2012 (2012 Server)

- WDS Server - Will not need one SCCM is setup (2012 Server)

- Web Server

- TMG 2010 Server (Only used to publish websites/services to the outside world)

- X86 Windows 8 Client - To make deployment images

- X64 Windows 8 Client - To make deployment images

- APP Sequencer Packager Client (Windows 8)

 

 

We want to expand what we run with the new servers. Ideally we would like to run to extra things

 

- System Center 2012 Suite

- Sharepoint 2013

- Lync Server 2013

- Probably some other stuff too, that I can't think of now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what do you think is the best to get?

 

We also have 14x 146GB SAS 10K SAS Drive spare from when we upgraded to 600GB Drives.

 

 

Im thinking off the following

 

 

Intel Chassis Components

 

x1 - Intel Chassis (MFSYS25V2)

x2 - 1000W PSU (AXXPSU) -This will make chassis have 4x1000W PSUs

x1 - 2ND SAN Storage Controller (AXXSCM3S)

x1 - 2ND Networking Switch (AXXSW1GB)

x6 Extra Intel Ethernet Ports (AXXGBIOMEZV) - Make each host have 4 Ethernet ports

x1 Intel Shared LUN Licence Key (MFSLUNKEY) - Enables the Shared SAN Feature.

x14 - 480GB Intel SSDSC2CW480A310

x14 Hard Drive Connection Converter (AXXTM3SATA) This converts the hard drive connection to fit the Intel chassis.

 

 

Intel Server Components

 

 

x6 - Intel Modular Server MFS2600KI (No Memory, Holds 16 RAM Modules, No CPU, Holds 2 CPU)

72x M393B1K70DH0-CK0 (8GB RAM) - 96GB Per Host

 

 

CPU - Options (Only will choose one of course)

 

x12 - 2.20GHZ E5-2660 8Core

x12 - 2.00GHZ E5-2650 8Core

x12 - 1.8GHZ E5-2650L 8Core

x12 - 2.5GHZ E5-2640 6 Core

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now thing to think about

 

How can we make use of the 14x600GB Drives and the 14x146GB Drives?

 

Method 1 that I'm thinking of. Get a SAN and place these into it? Keeping the SSDs in the New Intel chassis for the Virtual Servers. And using the new SAN (Technically the second SAN) for a massive file server? Were only just using over 1TB at the moment on the current fileserver. Don't know where the MACs in Music/Art should be connected to this? And maybe buy a few more SSDs to place into the old chassis and configure the 5 old modular servers to use as Remote Desktop hosts only.

 

 

 

Method 2 that I'm thinking of. Re install two of the modular servers on the old chassis to 2 Hyper-V hosts again, still with the 600GB drives installed in the chassis, this will allow for a large file server. Setting up two new virtual file servers and somehow configure it so if one of the virtual server turns off, the other takes the load, ie helps with maintenance without everyone losing the link to the file server. And also configure the 3 other modular server to Remote Desktop hosts.

 

 

 

 

So anyone got any better ideas/suggestions on how to configure this setup software/hardware, just need peoples thoughts

 

 

Thanks, also sorry for the long post!

 

 

 

EDIT: Sorry forgot to say, that is got to last 5 years!

 

Another EDIT: If a SAN, what SAN is best? HP? Windows Storage Server? or is that just software?

Edited October 19, 2012 by pritchardavid

[glennda]

If Your happy to do the SAN yourself get another intel server chassis or Super Micro chassis stick your disks in that along with a good raid card and lots of nics then Install Open-E Data Storage Software. This will give you the ability to setup the machine as an ISCSI/FC SAN with the ability to easily setup a replicated copy of it either in an Active/Active cluster (extra licensed feature) or Active/Passive meaning you've got an extra Level of HA.

 

EDIT: personally for the hosts I would go with something like the 3 x HP DL360 dual 6 core xeon tons of RAM and does 146gb SAS/SSD drives

You can also buy a chassis which supports say 24 disks and then in future all you need to do is stick more drives in the free slots and away you go.

I'm not sure why I'm just not a massive fan of those modular systems.

Edited October 19, 2012 by glennda

[tmcd35]

My first two thoughts are "technological over spec" and "lend us a fiver" (not necessarily in that order).

 

Of your two methods, I thought Method 1 made the most sense. Although I liked @glennda's edit better, pretty much our set up here. If I had the budget to redo our setup I wouldn't change much. Possibly look again at an iSCSI SAN rather than using a SMB share, maybe more segregate the VM share from the core File Server.

 

Last server we bought (about £2.5k) has something like 24 cores and 96Gb ram. Our storage array came it at around £7k with 16x400Gb SAS drives.

 

My first thoughts in your case is looking at the existing servers. They have 8Gb Ram at the moment, how much max can each server take? And you say you've used 5 out of 6 slots in the existing chassis? How much would it cost to put in the 6th server?

 

Personally I'd max out the existing modular system, and look at possibly two chassis on the SAN, one for VM's and one for File Sharing/Data. Or maybe, one SAN with separate LUN's for VM and Data, and then mirroring it.

[pritchardavid]

Well we have our budget accepted now, £27k maybe a little bit more if really needed.... Any other suggestions, £26k gets us the above spec with the best processor. Is it better to get a few gen8 HP servers and SAN instead? Would want to use only Intel SSDs only in the SAN, guess a HP SAN is a no, cause you have to use their expensive SSDs. Also have no don't idea what connection to use, FC, SCSI, InfiniBand. I have throught of a DIY SAN put that would mean it would not be a dual controller SAN which you need really in case it fails or needs a reboot cause a update etc. Any ideas should be good, see what you can spend the money on... Would like to get this ordered ASAP Edited April 18, 2013 by pritchardavid

[pritchardavid]

anyone?

[glennda]

Can you remind me monday i am out at the moment…

[TheScarfedOne]

Quick note on your server roles...you will be able to combine your AppV server into SCCM 2012 as well...

[pritchardavid]

Can you remind me monday i am out at the moment…

Sure, thanks

[pritchardavid]

Quick note on your server roles...you will be able to combine your AppV server into SCCM 2012 as well...

Would the APPV packages just add through the SCCM console then? Gussing the clients still need both the SCCM and APPV client installed? Also would I have to install any APP-V roles onto the SCCM server, or is that all included in the SCCM install?

[TheScarfedOne]

Would the APPV packages just add through the SCCM console then? Gussing the clients still need both the SCCM and APPV client installed? Also would I have to install any APP-V roles onto the SCCM server, or is that all included in the SCCM install?

 

Yep, they add as applications. You don t need to do any appv server install, or anything different. The stream ability is baked into sccm. The appv client is still needed separately on the clients, as is the sccm client. Appv client can be installed as part of the os deployment task sequence.

[glennda]

Personally I would go with what I mentioned above. Normally I would recommend VMware for the Hypervisor but Hyper-V is getting better.

 

1 x 3 node cluster HP DL360/380 Gen8 around 100gb ram Dual 8 core Xeon. (Or what you require plus 30-50%), say if you use 50GB in each host put in at least 80 as this gives the ability to lose a host and the cluster carry on.

 

SAN - Take a look at some open-e hardware supplies they will get you some high end kit custom built such as broadberry, very pc etc. You can custom design it to your requirements mix of SAS/SSD drives with a very intelligent easily managed interface. This will also support Active-active clustering which could be a future need.

 

Networking - I would try and go 10GB ISCSI but to be honest 4 x 1GB iscsi links will be more than adequate as long as they are MPIO'd correctly.

[gshaw]

I'd rather have separate servers and a SAN rather than an OEM blade-style system where everything is tied to one chassis. Also means you're not tied to 2.5" drives with maximum 10k rpm speed. You won't go wrong with HP \ Dell servers in terms of future support and parts.