craig-schools

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Thanks for that clarification. It would be the clincher between using RAID or Storage Spaces if it messed with my VM's which is the whole point of this / any server build.

So if I use Storage Spaces I can't put my HyperV VM's on it? Surely thats not right... I won't be storing any "files" directly on the Storage Space, only VM's which will then hold the daily usage word / excel etc docs.

thats some good speeds there. I'll run a test on mine, I imagine they are fairly horrendous tho

No it's a tower unit so would have plenty of space for drives.

I wasnt sure how advanced tiering was with regards the speed difference, hence the 2x SAS speeds. I'm already using 1.1TB of my storage I'm looking at at least doubling my available space so 2.4TB as minimum really. I could probably get away with 2TB with the 1x SSD and 4x 900's but I don't really want to find that in 1 - 2 years I need to spend another 1k on drives because they are full. I could up the 4x to 6x but that will be budget dependent. I'll have it onsite about 3-4weeks before it goes live so should give me some time to play, I will be spooling up 6x of the 8x VM's during this time but they won't be in use, just a bit of prep work. dhicks - 1TB SSD for £300, you point me to a server grade SSD for that price and I'll consider it. Found consumer ones for around that price point.

So maybe using storage spaces I'd be better with a mix of 2x 2.5 240gb SSD £196 2x 2.5 600gb 15k £287 2x 2.5 900gb 10k £266 (prices from scan.co.uk for comparison) but would this actually work as im only going to be putting HyperV VM drives on it and not "actual files" (like the most accessed word docs etc)? I assume it would move the entire VM drive container which would move my FILES VM to the SSD and put my PRINT VM on the 10k as an example? Its really difficult to get my head around the whole Storage Spaces without having a device to "play" on.

dhicks- Yes it will be a direct replacement server wise so running the same amount of VM's if not a couple more as time goes on. I've heard about the Tiered Storage that 2012 offers but admit I've not had chance to read up on it, I guess thats on my joblist for today. Arthur- The reason I said use a desktop is it would be much quicker. When I update my images the VM seems to take an absolute age to do ANYTHING, in the time it takes the VM to do anything I can image 3x laptops and do all the updates etc. I assume its thrashing the drives pulling WSUS from a VM and then installing them on another VM, but I'm not sure. I've upped the spec on the first post to 64GB and I'll check out prices on more than, depending on budget. I've got about 6.5k - 7.5k to spend on hardware alone (inc UPS). Then I've got to get the licensing in order with CALs etc.

True. I'll make it 2x SSD's, and thats only because I know 300GB SAS would be a total waste for just the Host OS.

Yeh I was debating on the RAM, but I can't foresee many more VM's being required, but I take your point. As for single disk, with SSD's being so reliable I wasn't sure I could get away with it. Yes RAID 5, and yes 2012R2.

I'm in a large Primary School, 400 students (Foundation - Year 6) with 55 staff, I've started the groundwork for a new server in the summer. Here's the breakdown on what I'm running currently all Server 2008 R2. Dell PowerEdge T610 HyperV Host ONLY 2x Xeon E5620 @2.4Ghz 16GB RAM (15GB used) OS RAID - 2x 136GB SAS 15k (50Gb Used) STORAGE RAID - 5x 450GB SAS 15k (including 1x HotSpare) 1.2Tb total. 1.1Tb used. Dual LAN, Dual PSU, 5yrs old in Sept Out of Warranty. HyperV VMs AV - Kaspersky DC1 - DNS, DHCP, AD etc. Veeam Trial backs up to local and NAS weeknights Deployment - MDT, WSUS. Veeam Mon & Fri Files -500Gb, holds Home Drive and Shares. Windows Server Backup to Local, Shares copied nightly to NAS, Veeam Mon & Fri APP - runs Tucasi, Paxton and a few other bits. Veeam Mon & Fri Print Server - Veeam Sun SIMS Server - Scripted backup to Encrypted USB daily, Backup to NAS nightly, Veeam Mon & Fri DC2 - Veeam Sat & Weds Build - used for updating MDT images when I get time, maybe twice a year. Could probably use a desktop tbh. Just to be clear, Veeam is running on another device. Once the above has been retired I plan on using that as the Veeam Backup Server in the other building with DC2 HyperV running. New Server Spec Server 2012 2x Xeon 2630 @ 2.4ghz 64GB RAM (was originally 32GB) OS - 2x 160GB SSD Originally 1x SSD STORAGE RAID - 6x 600GB SAS 15k (no hotspare) 3Tb total. Dual LAN, Dual PSU etc. 5yr NBD Warranty. 1500VA UPS I'll be purchasing End of May / Early June so that it arrives in plenty of time for the Summer break. Have I over / under specced the server for 5 years service? Any suggestions that I may have overlooked?

WOW that's some "light reading" right there, as I'm sat almost twiddling my thumbs here waiting for downtime I might as well setup a new identical structure on my VM DC and see if the ADMT will work. If it doesn't I've not really lost anything except time which I have until 15.30 anyway. With 450 users (300 pupils who can wait), and 200 devices its going to be a mission regardless of what I do, assuming the System State Fails.

There is no secondary server grade hardware (except a spare RAID drive) so I've bodged a brand new PC into use with multiple drives and started spinning up new VM's to try and take some of the load off, but its AD thats the killer. I've got system state backups from November so will be trying a AD restore after hours, but I'm not hopeful. I'll export all the VM's to an external device before attempting it so if I need to do a full format and wipe down it will be slightly quicker. Is there an easy way of exporting the contents of ADUC to then import into a new one? or is it a case of manually adding each user? I'm also assuming I can't create a new duplicate AD structure on my newly spun DC VM during working hours?

So I inherited a 2008 R2 Server (Physical on Dell T610, 2x E5620, 16GB RAM, RAID) running AD (450 users, 200 clients), DNS, DHCP, MDT / WDS, WSUS, File Shares and also hosting 4x HyperV 2008 R2 servers. No secondary server, File backup to NAS daily, System State + Drives backup using Windows Server Backup to External USB (swapped weekly). Recently users have been having trouble with mapped drives, permissions and general GPO settings not applying correctly, when they have previously been fine. Hopped into Event Viewer on the DC and got this Event ID 467 - Source NTDS ISAM NTDS (864) NTDSA: Database C:/Windows/NTDS/ntds.dit Index DRA_USN_index of table datatable is corrupted (0). Oh dear. Tried the DSRM / Offline Defrag / ntdsutil semantic database analysis go fixup and also esentutil repairs but all failed with JET_err - 1526 0xfffffa0a JET_errLVCorrupted Corruption encountered in long-value tree I've spun up a new VM DC (fresh not recovered) but of course that fails to replicate, hoped it might replicate and then I could offline defrag that instead and then dcpromo the original but no dice. What other options do I have? Thanks