Remember that SBS2K3 is not supported by MS in a virtual environment - but does work. Have you considered doing a proper DR practice to see what happens?
You might be in a better position than you think. If you have Shadow Copy on the drives and can access the Exchange store then you will have a much smaller window of data loss - as long as you can get the raw VM data across. Can you put a hold on the email flow into the system? Can you break the server data into other places i.e. a drive on a NAS box which keeps a copy of the user data for while they are switching over? I would look to planning an upgrade to SBS 2011, if not for now then for soon. Take a look at the swing migration options as you are really talking about a hardware swing in a DR scenario - you can keep the plates spinning while you move what you need to without a major impact. Sounds like VMHost2 is much older and therefore slower, but an upgrade might be cost effective. I would test the DR option and see if they are happy with performance. You could stop email, turn off all machines, run backup, turn off old box, start backup box and then start desktops to see how it runs - if enough data is cached then it might be fine after a slow logon for users. Mike From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 09 January 2012 05:47 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Fun with Hyper-V - and failover hardware Q's I have a client with SBS 2K3 (VM-SBS1) that's VM'd on a 2K8 (non-R2) server (VMHOST1). I now nightly have it shooting backups of VM-SBS1 VHD's to a 2008 R2 Hyper-V server (VMHOST2) at 6PM. I have the R2 server configured to use these disk's as a VM on it (VM-SBS1-SPARE) and this VM will always be off. Both VMHOST servers have local storage only, no SAN. But by doing backups this way my thinking is worst case scenario if VMHOST1 or VM-SBS1 get KIA I simply spool up VM-SBS1-SPARE and away I go.The worst case scenario is the live servers die at 5:58PM and my client loses 1 day of data While this puts me miles ahead of where I had been (previously the best I had was local eSATA backup which takes 3 hours to copy back local), there is the not insignificant issue that VMHOST2 has RAID1 SATA drives whereas VMHOST1 has RAID5 SAS 15K RPM drives. Performance will suck, and in fact I'm not sure WHAT kind of performance this would have with Exchange and SQL and 55 users hooked to it. I am assuming it would be better than nothing, but... How much should I be concerned with performance? I am imagining the worst case would be the client has to run on VMHOST2 for a day or two while VMHOST1 gets rebuilt (say there's a hardware issue and Dell needs to deliver a part). I am thinking I have 3 options, in increasing order of cost: 1. Don't sweat it, it's a decent DR option 2. Upgrade the VMHOST2 drives to SAS drives(~$1000) 3. Come up with an iSCSI solution (effectively this http://garvis.ca/2011/08/30/busting-the-myth-you-cannot-cluster-windows-small-business-server/) I could probably get them to go with option 2, the caveat here is that server is out of warranty although it's not that old (ship date 10/19/07). I will talk it over with my client, but also wantde to get your guys'opinions. David Lum Systems Engineer // NWEATM Office 503.548.5229 // Cell (voice/text) 503.267.9764 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
