I guess this is where it's easy for me to say this, but if you have the time and inclination do take on board mine and others suggestions to dig out a spare box and just play like mad with VMware/Hyper-V and a couple of the VSA/NAS distributions that you can download - honestly it'll just put you in such a good position when you're speaking to any potential reseller, and respectfully as I don't know your situation, it may allow you to re-evaluate the $40k's worth of services on the quote :)
One of the problems you'll probably face is that if you don't have a very specific set of requirements, most SAN/NAS solutions will likely do what you want - this is good because it gives you choice, but it's bad because other than price it can be difficult to grade solutions based on need. NetApp is good kit, but you do pay for it, so again just be very sure what licenses and support is/is not included, how long it is for, and what any future expansion is likely to set you back. Basically don't rush it :) ________________________________ From: David Mazzaccaro [[email protected]] Sent: 13 March 2012 6:18 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: New to virtualization The total $130k proposal does include 200 W2008 CALs, 75 Citrix Xenapp licenses, new PIX ASA firewall, and ~$40k of services. It would also bring my domain up to 2008 R2, a new Citrix XenApp farm. From: Paul Hutchings [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 11:45 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: New to virtualization If it were me, given the limited details (no mention of IOPs), I would be looking at the new G8 HP or 12g Dell servers that can take a lot more spindles, with a view to using DAS and running a Virtual SAN under VMware. DataCenter is the way to go ideally as you will end up with more VM’s than you expected to and an Enterprise license doesn’t (I think) allow you to shift VM’s around if you follow it strictly. Spend some of your money on CALs and infrastructure rather than blowing the lot on running a 10 year old OS on a spanky new hardware SAN IMO. From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 13 March 2012 15:04 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: New to virtualization Hi all, I am starting to investigate moving our aging network infrastructure into the virtual world. ~ 10 servers, 6-7 years old Windows 2003 domain Exchange 2003 Citrix 4.0 farm ~190 users After some initial discussions w/ a reseller, here’s what they are recommending: (3) DL 380 G7 servers (to host the VMs) ~$18,000 (1) Net App FAS2240 (this is the SAN that would host 12 600GB drives of storage for the VMs) ~$20,000 VMWare essentials plus kit (VMware software) ~$5200 (3) MS Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise (this would allow the 3 HP servers to run 4 Windows 2008 VMs each) I guess the way it would work is that the VMs would reside on the SAN, and the 3 hosts would call up the SAN to load each VM utilizing the host’s CPU, RAM, NIC, etc.)… right? I have meetings scheduled w/ 2 other vendors, but verbally both have started the conversation along the same path as above. Being very new to VM, does the above scenario seem to make sense? It is hard for me to imagine all that traffic going between the SAN and the host servers w/o creating a huge bottleneck (over gig Ethernet) Do people recommend virtualizing every server? Domain controllers? Exchange? Citrix farm (4 server)? Shouldn’t something be left physical? Is 7 TB of storage enough (probably only 3 usable after array config)? Is the net app a decent appliance? $20k sounds cheap to me… I have done a little more reading, and from what I understand w/ 3 Windows Enterprise licenses, I would be limiting myself to 12 VMs. However, if I went w/ 3 Windows Datacenter licenses, for a small increase in price - I would get unlimited VMs? Which would allow for actually having a testing environment, and better patch deployment? 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