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Dear all, I'm looking at virtualising our server rack, and seeing as we have an SAS SAN, using a failover cluster as well, all using current hardware. We are a split site school, fibre-optic joining the two sites, with one network / AD, approx. 3400 students and 450 staff. Current hardware: 3 x IBM x3650 (2 NICs, 1 x E5430, 4GB) 2 x IBM x3550 M2 (2 NICs, 1 x E5540, 10GB) 1 x IBM x3550 M3 (2 NICs, 1 x E5620, 16GB) 1 x IBM x3550 M3 (2 NICs, 2 x E5620, 16GB) 1 x IBM DS3512 5TB SAN with dual controllers (4 SAS ports & 2 NICs per controller) Currently the SAN is connected to one of the x3550 M3 via both controllers for redundancy. At a high level I'm thinking the following: 2 x3650 as backup DCs (1 on each site) 1 x3650 with a 12TB NAS for backups (on the other site to the main server room) 4 node fail-over Hyper-V 2012 cluster on the 2 x3550 M2 and 2 x3550 M3 The cluster will contain the main DC (inc. DNS & DHCP), MS-SQL / application server, Print server, file server, SIMS server, SharePoint server. Anyway, I think the upgrades I need are as follows: 6 extra SAS controller cards and cables for the 3 x3550 not currently connected to the SAN 4 additional twin NIC modules for the 4 x3550 (to bring each one up to 4 NICs each) More RAM to bring all x3550 to a minimum of 16GB My questions are: How does the SAN connect to all 4 nodes? I think run 1 SAS cable from each node to each SAN controller (so 2 per node for redundancy) How does the SAN connect on the network? 1 NIC per controller is currently plugged in, but I haven't traced where they go yet How do the nodes wire up together for the cluster network / failover? I think each node will connect to each other node (3 NICs per node) or use a dedicated switch (1 NIC per node, or 2 teamed) How do the nodes connect to the main network? Here I'm thinking that the 4th NIC on each node connects to the main backbone / network switch (or 2 teamed if using a node switch for Q3) How am I doing? Can anyone offer any advice on the above? Although my investigation is into a 4 node cluster, I actually suspect a 2 node cluster would suffice, on the two x3550 M3, but if I can get the budget I may as well make it a 4 node. The IT budget here is a very strange affair, so it wouldn't be as though I could use the unspent money on another project. If the 'budget' isn't approved, then I will look to the 2 node cluster and possibly stretch to an additional E5620 CPU. Many thanks for any comments!

Hello folks, Apologies if this should be in the Technical/Virtualisation thread, but I'm also after some non-technical answers, if possible. I'm a head of ICT (ex Network Manager many moons ago - went over to the dark side...) and I'd like to know if anybody has any direct experience on the usability of virtualised clients for the teaching of discrete ICT- i.e. is virtualisation more suited to just basic PC use, e.g. Web browsing, MS office, or can it cope with the full range of software that an ICT department might throw at it, e.g. CS5.5, dev software etc? Does it also give access to the full range of ports on the PC? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've always preferred the standard 3 yearly upgrade programme for hardware, but this is no longer cost effective at my school and we're seriously considering virtualising. Many thanks, Richard

Hey, Just got a bit of an idea running around in my head and I was wondering if anyone else has tried anything like this. In school we do an applied ICT A level and part of this the students must install an OS in the 1st year and a server OS + network stuff (AD a couple of clients and a couple of shared peripherals) in the 2nd year. At the minute they use our old knackered hardware cast offs which isn't ideal as they aren't in the best nik to start with and we often have hardware failure driver and compatibility issues (as the same hardware is often used for break and build stuff). Anyway it occurs to me a better way would be to virtualise everything, set up a Xen/ESXI/HyperV server and use the existing (knackered) hardware they have to remote into it. Then its just a case of having the students create new virtual machines to install and configure then for the networking stuff run each server out on individual own subnets and VLANs to stop any conflicts (I think this can be done with virtual VLAN bridges). There are a few issues I need to think through before I even think about suggesting this to anyone like how to install the guest OS's (as the students have to do this and will want to at the same time which I'm assuming will be a massive pain) but I would like to hear if anyone else is running something similar. Cheers J P.S. I've not got a huge amount of virtualisation experiences so please feel free to make suggestions/comments.

Hello I am trying to set up a virtual RM CC4 machine on an apple mac in VirtualBox. This is my first few steps into the virtualised world. I have tried making an XP VM and then pxe booting it but its having none of it. Has anyone done this before? Have any guidance on how to do it? or possibly a guide? Is it possible to pxe boot a virtual machine from a physical RM network? I have looked at the physical to virtual tools but it takes an age to make an image. Is there a better way? Thanks in advance.

Hello, We are looking at re-furbishing our ICT suite and replacing PC's in school etc... and wondered what the cost may be to implement some kind of virtual computing environment? Our network is getting a bit full and the cost of installing new network points and switches, new computers etc... would be quite high. What would it be weighed against developing a virtual computing environment? Am I correct in thinking that if we have a virtual server a workstation could log on and use any operating system? Also- would all users see the same desktop and be able to use the same programs? I have more questions for later... J x

Citrix have just announced a new version of their free Xen Server, version 5.5 The bullet points: * Consolidated Backup allows third-party backup vendors to interface directly with XenServer to provide full and incremental, in-guest, file and image backups of virtual machines. The new consolidated backup capabilities in XenServer also provide customers with the ability to execute full GUI-based snapshots directly from the XenCenter central management console. * Enhanced Conversion Tools make it easy to convert virtual machines created in the VMDK format (commonly used by VMware) into the VHD format (commonly used by Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V). The new XenConvert tools also make it easy to seamlessly convert between any of the common open virtualization format packages, including OVF (open virtualization format), OVA (open virtual appliance) and XVA (XenServer virtual appliance). * Enhanced Search enables customers to view and manage XenServer environments by a range of criteria including VM name, resource pool, location, server, storage repository, snapshot time, and network name – all from a single location. It also provides the ability to create custom views or folders. * Active Directory Integration makes it easy for customers to use their AD credentials to mange XenServer hosts as well as log and audit user activity. * Expanded Guest Support adds SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Debian 5.0 and RedHat/CentOS/Oracle 5.3 to a growing list of supported guests that includes virtually every version of the Windows and Linux operating systems. The beta, as well as a 30-day trial version of Citrix Essentials, is available at Citrix Systems » Citrix XenServer: Efficient Virtual Server Software. The beta version of the new Citrix XenServer 5.5 is also available today and can be downloaded free of charge from Citrix Systems » Products » -- XenServer/Essentials » XenServer. The 5.5 version of both product lines will be generally available June 19. Linky: Citrix Systems » Citrix Upgrades Server Virtualization Product Lines for XenServer and Hyper-V

How many have taken the plunge and gone fully server 2016 and windows 10 as its coming up to the new financial year and we are looking at upgrading from server 2008 any huge headaches? smooth installs etc

Hello everyone, We have just set up App-V 5.0 SP2 Full Infrastructure and are getting on well with it. However, for some reason when we create App Connection Groups and add the required Apps into them and publish the group, it does not get published on the client machine. The individual apps are shown on the client, but there is nothing listed under App Connection Groups. We are trying to do this with Adobe CS5. We have sequenced each individual application in the suite and want to connect them together using a connection group - however this is not working at all. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hi, What VM platform should I use ? Just got in a server to virtualise Windoze 2008 R2 /2012 Servers to replace old hardware... HP DL360p Gen8 - 4TB HDD - RAIDed, 2 x CPU, 72GB RAM, 4 x 1GB NIC, dual power etc etc. Platform will be Debian most likely. I'm aiming to virtualise up to 5 Windoze servers and one Smoothwall... So far It'll be... 1 x Domain controller, DNS, Auth, GPO etc 1 x WDS, WSUS, IIS, Apps 1 x Smoothwall / Proxy 1 x MS Exchange ... and anything I might need in the future. Got 30TB of NAS's and file server for storage so no file serving or anything like that. I've used the free version of Virtualbox quite a bit on my PC but reckon VMWare will be a better solution for this purpose. If so, what version do I need and is there a freebie version that will do what I want. ~Cheers for your comments~ ; )

Hi all, I work for a large high school and will soon be implementing a virtual server environment. I am favouring Vmware vSphere at the moment and was wondering if there were many other schools out there using vSphere? And, if so, are you happy with it? If anybody is using other hypervisors, ie, Citrix Xen Server or Hyper-V, it would be great to know your opinion of these systems too as I need to do a comparison of all and the pro's and cons of each. Thanks for taking the time to read and your input

The company i work for boght a new server 1 year ago (spending over $30,000). Here is the configuration: Hardware and SoftwareVirtual Server Host – Hardware Dell PowerEdge R300 Drobo Elite 4TB Virtual Server Host – Software VMWare Essentials – Operating System VRangerPro – Backup with 3 year supportSmall Business Server 2008 the drobo was divided in 4, in order to manage the following functions: email and sql, printers, applications and web server. Now... we have had so many problems since installation... slowness, full use of memory, server rebooting by itself. We ask another IT company to look at our configutaion, and these are there findings: Currently the “idle” system demand is at 40%, which is on the high side (6% is the standard idle percentage that we like to see). The current Dell PowerEdge R300 server is not recommended for a virtual environment because it is not built for multiple processing tasks (running SBS, Exchange, SQL, etc. all at the same time). It is designed for a single service, not a multi-virtual service environment. The Dell R300 is the hypervisor host for the virtual machines and the Drobo is the host for the virtual hard drives. This is causing performance issues because the Dell R300 relies on the network to access the virtual hosted hard drives on the Drobo, and not the local hardware, to manage your services (SBS, Exchange, Avanti, Small Business Financials, SQL Server Database, Print Services, Trend-Micro, Terminal Services and the Web Server). It is our recommendation that new hardware be purchased to eliminate the latency and performance issues that are occurring. We suggest buying two of the PowerEdge R710 rack-mountable servers for two reasons: redundancy and performance (should a power supply, mother board or RAM failure occur you will have a backup). We like to minimize single point of failures with mission critical hardware. The other benefit of this set-up is that it will allow differential virtualization, which allows you to have separate Active Directory servers. For example, if the server hosting Active Directory goes offline, all of the other servers dependant on the Active Directory go offline until the Active Directory comes back online. By having two servers and two separate Active Directories you eliminate this issue. Can this be true? Can the first IT company be soooooooooo far off? Advice needed! Please

Not sure how long its been out but they have sorted PowerChute to work with Hyper-V, ESX etc. for free rather than charging a bunch extra for it. Good stuff APC, it took a while but you did fix it. Software / Firmware=

Still trying to wrap my head around all this Hyper-V stuff. I've got two hosts, both dual-socketed with hexacore Xeons, so 12 cores/ 24 threads each, and 32GB of RAM. They'll operate in a failover cluster with live migration in case anything goes wrong. I've got it planned so that the startup RAM for every VM totals 30Gb (leaving two for the host) so that in the case of a failover, one host can manage every VM. I'm then planning on using the dynamic memory to let VMs grow to a higher value when both hosts are up and there's 60Gb of RAM available to use overall. However, I cannot, for the life of me, find out if I can do a similar thing with CPU cores. Does this mean I need to plan my core allocation to fit into the 22 available threads and waste half my processing power for a just-in-case scenario? Or will Hyper-V/VMM allow for CPU oversubscription, where in normal day-to-day activity there's no oversubscription taking place except when one host failsover? Potentially it's not as wasteful as it might seem as it would at least mean that VMs have real cores allocated rather than HyperThreaded Pretend Cores, except when failing over, but it still strikes me as under-utilising resources. Has anyone set this up to know better than Google?

This HP server is virtually brand new, having been powered on for a grand total of 20 hours as part of a VMware ESX demo environment. It comes as new with the following additional items already installed in addition to the manufacturer's spec below: 2 x HP Dual Port hard drive - 146 GB - SAS 2 x HP memory - 4 GB - DIMM 240-pin - DDR3 The server is still wrapped in its original protective packaging (see below). The warranty is supplied directly by HP and is valid for 3 years from when I received it on 06/01/10, so until January 2013! Buy price was £1,940 inc VAT and delivery, accept sensible offers over £1,600, courier is £45 or can be collected - PM me for details. http://lightbeans.com/eb/IMAGE_151.jpg http://lightbeans.com/eb/IMAGE_153.jpg Main Specifications Product Description HP ProLiant DL360 G6 Entry - Xeon E5504 2 GHz Type Server Form Factor Rack-mountable - 1U Dimensions (WxDxH) 42.6 cm x 69.2 cm x 4.3 cm Weight 14.5 kg Server Scalability 2-way Processor 1 x Intel Xeon E5504 / 2 GHz ( Quad-Core ) Cache Memory 4 MB L3 Cache Cache Per Processor 4 MB RAM 12 GB (installed) / 144 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM (includes 2 x 4GB modules above) Storage Controller RAID ( Serial ATA-150 / SAS ) - PCI Express x4 ( Smart Array P410i ) Server Storage Bays Hot-swap 2.5" Hard Drive 2 x 146GB Dual Port Hard Disk (includes 2 x 146GB drives above) Monitor None. Graphics Controller ATI ES1000 Video Memory 32 MB Networking Network adapter - PCI Express x4 - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet - Ethernet Ports : 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Power AC 120/230 V ( 50/60 Hz ) Manufacturer Warranty 3 years warranty - on-site Extended Specifications Front Accessible Bays Qty 1 Hot-Swap Bays Qty 4 Width 42.6 cm Depth 69.2 cm Height 4.3 cm Weight 14.5 kg Processor Type Intel Xeon E5504 / 2 GHz Multi-Core Technology Quad-Core 64-bit Computing Yes Installed Qty 1 Max Supported Qty 2 Cache Memory Type L3 Cache Installed Size 4 MB Cache Per Processor 4 MB Mainboard Chipset Type Intel 5520 Data Bus Speed 800 MHz RAM Installed Size 12 GB / 144 GB (max) Technology DDR3 SDRAM Form Factor DIMM 240-pin Features Registered Configuration Features 2 x 2 GB Networking Networking Network adapter - PCI Express x4 - integrated Ethernet Ports 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Ethernet Controller(s) HP NC382i Data Link Protocol Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet Remote Management Controller Integrated Lights-Out 2 Standard Features Wake on LAN (WoL), ACPI support Compliant Standards IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.1Q, IEEE 802.3ab, IEEE 802.1p, IEEE 802.3ad (LACP) Expansion / Connectivity Expansion Bays Total (Free) 4 ( 4 ) x hot-swap - 2.5" SFF ? 1 ( 1 ) x front accessible - 5.25" Slim Line Expansion Slots Total (Free) 1 ( 0 ) x PCI Express x8 - low-profile ? 1 ( 1 ) x PCI Express x16 - full-length, full-height ? 18 ( 16 ) x memory - DIMM 240-pin ? 2 ( 1 ) x processor ? 1 ( 1 ) x PCI-X / 133 MHz Interfaces 1 x keyboard - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style), 1 x mouse - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style), 1 x serial - RS-232 - 9 pin D-Sub (DB-9), 1 x display / video - VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15), 3 x USB - 4 PIN USB Type A, 2 x network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T - RJ-45, 1 x management - HP iLO - RJ-45 Miscellaneous Features Administrator password, power-on password, keyboard password, disk configuration lock, diskette I/O control, serial port I/O control, quick lock Compliant Standards ACPI 1.0b Power Device Type Power supply - hot-plug Voltage Required AC 120/230 V ( 50/60 Hz ) Power Provided 460 Watt Manufacturer Warranty Service & Support 3 years warranty Service & Support Details Limited warranty - parts and labour - 3 years - on-site Environmental Parameters Min Operating Temperature 10C Max Operating Temperature 35C Humidity Range Operating 10 - 90%

Hi guys, I've been using this forum for a while, and its great! This is the first time I've got round to posting something, but I hope to keep it up now. Basically, we were looking at virtual servers, and decided to implement a basic system over the summer. We are using the now-free VMware ESXi server, hosting a few Windows servers and a Linux LAMP server (the one on virtual appliances is v-easy to setup). I'm loving the VMware software, its all so easy, but the only thing I can't figure out how to do is backup the vmx's and vmdk's. We use Symantec Backup exec 12, and don't want to have to install an agent on each virtual machine (£200+ per machine, not fun!). Does anyone have any experience with this and can you advise please? Thanks in advance, David

We have recently deployed AppV 5.0 to an IT room and have published some applications on a user basis (by targetting an AD group). However, when these students logon to the machine, a user refresh does not occur and instead the students have to open the AppV Client GUI and then click the "Update" button to manually force this refresh. Once this is done, the application appears in the user's start menu and all is well. I have enabled the User Refresh at Logon Group Policy setting and when running RSOP.msc on a client, these GPO settings are being successfully applied. Has anyone else experienced an issue like this and if so, how did you go about resolving it. Many thanks. J.Worth