Absolutely. Once you have virtualization it's so damn easy to just bring up a new server when needed. You do have beware server sprawl, and more VMs means more machines to monitor, patch, etc., but the value of having the flexibility to move machines around, to quickly provision new servers, to address disaster recovery issues can't be overstated. I started incorporating virtualization slowly at my not-for-profit about 4 years ago, and didn't get Datacenter licenses. Now I'm in the process of flattening the host machines and putting datacenter on them.
BES is a great example of having a single task server. When I had it sharing a physical machine with some other products it was a real pain because it was always having issues that seemed only a reboot would solve. Now its it's own VM, it still needs fairly frequent reboots (although not as often as before, new install, new version), but no big deal - nobody even notices. I'll admit to not seeing in the beginning how far I'd be taking virtualization, and should heve gotten more licensing, more memory and more disk space up front. ________________________________ From: Jonathan Link [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 2:49 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: New to virtualization If I were doing licensing from scratch, I'd go Datacenter, even accounting for the CPU licensing, it's not all that much more. The ability to add and move servers, "thinly" provision servers, etc makes a a much more robust environment. When I say thinly provision servers, I mean, making a server responsible for only one task, such as AV management, BES, whatever, without putting additional duties on it as is common in a physical server environment. David: of the physical servers, if you had your druthers and could isolate the tasks out to an individual server, how many servers would you really have? Or are all those servers only doing one task, already? On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Ralph Smith <[email protected]> wrote: "However, if I went w/ 3 Windows Datacenter licenses, for a small increase in price - I would get unlimited VMs? " Datacenter is licensed per CPU - those are dual CPU servers so you would need 6 Datacenter licenses. From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 11:04 AM 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? Thx . ~ 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 ~ 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 ~ 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 ~ 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
