awesomeo3000

I think i'm looking more in this direction, pricing up a couple of dell R710s with dual processors and a good chunk of ram it seems like i could get them pretty well specced for 10k-ish which should more than cover our needs for processing power and space for actual server images. Along with that i could rebuild and upgrade an existing proliant dl380 as a 3rd and backup host. The file storage i can then continue to keep outside the virtual hosts on a separate nas or file server.

Essentially after a few opinions here, looking to upgrada a number of servers and weighing up the possible options. We are part virtualized, but only with a few lower impact servers and locally stored on one hp proliant. As part of the wider picture i want to virtualize the rest of the servers, including exchange, sims, sharepoint, sql etc. Initially 've been looking at things like dell powervaults m3200i which seem to be quite well received but not exactly the cheapest units. I would want to maximise the protection so dual controllers, multiple nics and so on and therefore don't want to save money by getting something that is not up to scratch and future proof. I'm budget conscious and really wouldn't want to spending over 15-20k all in including the hosts (if possbile!!!). This is where my second thought comes in of getting higher spec hosts with more local storage, losing the san and then maybe just get a new storage server for file shares. We don't have masses of need for file storage space, current needs are no more than 1tb. Other than the failover abilities that a san would bring, is there any real need to get a san and nost just store the virtual machines locally?

Yeah that's the thing i'm not too sure on, currently i'm trying to get it to use the existing ADPS and sims databases, so i was thinking that a simple install of the site/web apps etc would make it work. It's on the same domain and accounts, in theory just another web server that can use the same servers for authentication and data retreival....

Hi thanks for the reply, but that link seems to do with sims databases, this is a sharepoint and slg issue i believe, the sims database is not being changed, just a test version of the slg that would connect to it. thanks

Hi everyone, I'm setting up a test server while testing upgrading sharepoint to 2010. Having some trouble setting up the sims learning gateway site on the test server. The site has been set up, using the same msi's and commands as when doing upgrades (app tier.msi, web tier etc), all seems to work in principle with the site/pages but the webparts all produce the following error message - Information not available Sorry but the requested information is currently unavailable It seems like a possible connection error, but the webpart for entering the connection details does the same thing....just wondered if anyone else had managed to set up an slg site themelves and had any pointers?

thanks for that, you've also answered my next question which was about the iscsi target sizes. I'd seen the 2tb limit on the netgear site but wasn't sure if that applied to the 4/8tb models too. Think i may have to keep looking for now, maybe try and find more money too!!

I'm looking to implement a few ideas.. Increase storage, virualize some servers and improve the backup system. Looking around the site i see there's lots of support for the sun 7110 for a more industrial solution, but this is going to be out of my price range, and so i've been looking at the readynas 2100, maybe getting two and using one to back the other up to a different area of the site. It which seems to provide a variety of features, iscsi targeting, lots of space and for a pretty low price. Does anyone have any current experience with these units, in particular using the iscsi feature, how they cope with a lot of activity, say if users areas were stored on there? thanks for any ideas...