virtual servers anyone run them

[McBunny]

anyone run any virtual servers in a live environment ?


after a machine spec to run

one exchange 2003 server about 180 users with about 134 gig of data

one sql server with 4 databases 55 gig of data at the mo but could be increasing to about 100 gig fairly soon

file server serving about 200 people with about 350 gig of data

and one application server with about 20 gig of data various license server software etc



dell kit by the way

 

[KDF]

That better be one serious system if your gonna be running all that on it !

 

[McBunny]

thats why im after a spec from someone that may know what it needs lol


it will be used as a hot failover server so 99% of the time i hope it wont be doing f**k all but it will be there just incase it will be using neverfail to provide the zero downtime provision

 

[Cookie]

Go speak to Dell and have them send someone in to spec you up something, anything I'd suggest would be guesswork at best

Also, are you really trying to run all that on one physical box? No redundancy?

 

[McBunny]

that is going to be the redundency the active servers will all be seperate servers most prob 2950's maybe a 6850 too


all im really after at the moment is a rough spec so i can get a rough budget price in

 

[Dafthead]

I have got a full blade system running 40 servers via VMWare (inc an Exchange cluster for 4000 users) with a NetApp SAN on the back of it

virtualisation is the way forward!

 

[dk]

until you said it was a hot spare I was shaking my head as there is no way I would recommend all of that on one server.

Its not recommended that SQL is is put into a VM, especially sitting it on with an exchange server and all those others. SQL likes to take processor and needs IO and thats not going to help.

From what I have been reading on SQL sites today ( a customer is looking to virtualise SQL too) the majority of people are happy to use vmware to virtualise SQL in a test or dev environment but it seems no one wants to own up to using it on a production server. But as yours is a spare then as you say, hopefully it is never going to be needed but when it is and all those apps will be running you will need quite a hefty server, probably 4 x dc processors and about 8-16gb ram and its still recommended that the SQL data disks and logs are separated etc.

I presume this is ESX server we are talking about and not some free software like vmware server or ms virtual server?

Will need 4-8 nics too to handle all the IO I would estimate.

I would suggest 2 machines though personally, 1 for the SQL and maybe file server and then the exchange and app server on the other?

Sorry but I have no idea on dell models, i'm a HP geek

Let me know if you need any more info Mc

 

[Daz]

I have got a full blade system running 40 servers via VMWare (inc an Exchange cluster for 4000 users) with a NetApp SAN on the back of it

virtualisation is the way forward!

NetApp is good stuff. Nice to see someone actually doing things right! (and not hanging it all off the back of a single 500GB SATA drive :rasp

 

[McBunny]

dave tbh 2 machines wouldnt be a problem tbh i was thinking 2 x quad core 2.66 gig e5345 16gb ram etc etc

yes would be esx

 

[dk]

sounds good, tbh, using 2 servers with 2 VM's on each would probably only require 8gb ram.

DO you know about the MS licensing rules for VM's, if you buy W2K3 enterprise license you get the rights to install it on 4 VM's on a physical server and if getting datacentre you have unlimted vm rights on a single physical machine.

That would be the only reason to go for 1 server to cut down on licensing costs etc.

 

[McBunny]

havent looked at the licensing stuff yet except for the failover stuff we only need one license per bit of software it seems as the other instance isnt actually running unless the other server isnt

16gb ram is only 1.6k so in the grand scheme of stuff its fook all

 

[dk]

havent looked at the licensing stuff yet except for the failover stuff we only need one license per bit of software it seems as the other instance isnt actually running unless the other server isnt

16gb ram is only 1.6k so in the grand scheme of stuff its fook all

ah, well this is where it gets complicated and people will give you wrong info etc.

The rules are that all software needs to be licensed, even on DR servers apart from 2 exceptions.

1. You have Software assurance on all the licenses being used i.e. on your windows 2k3 ent. license and all server CALS. In this instance you are allowed to install the software on a COLD start server, i.e. it can be installed but must be turned off except for a few circumstances, but not for warm or hot servers.

The full details can be found here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/7/3/8733d036-92b0-4cb8-8912-3b6ab966b8b2/dr_brief.doc

2. SQL server has special circumstances when licensed by Processor. If licensed by server and CALS then refer to point 1, if using processor licenses, these can be moved between servers so if you have 2 processor licenses on your production server you can run the DR server as a warm server, so have the software installed but not have anyone connecting to the SQL DB and then during failover you can assign those licenses to the DR server, this is the only scenario this counts for.

A good site for licensing rules is

http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights

Then choose the revelant product and lots of docs and info can be found in there.

Hope that makes it a bit clearer. So if you have your licenses enrolled in SA you get the cold start as a benefit, if you are doing a warm or hot start or not enrolled in SA you need the licenses for the software, even if you aren't using the server.

 

[McBunny]

hmm the licensing thing i will check up on dunno if we have sa with our select agreement as i didnt take it out