I break out by general function when possible - I have AV and patching on the same server, but SMS is on its own. One loose rule (I'll bet you guys consciously or unconsciously do the same) is "impact of reboot", as in, if a given server can be rebooted without any immediate user impact (SMS server), I try to put other functions on that same box. Same goes for used-by-department stuff, etc.
The fewer people I can impact with a reboot the better and, conveniently, working towards better business resiliency generally leads to a better configuration on that as well. Dave From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 9:32 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: New to virtualization You'll also want to avoid sprawl... The happy medium will depend on many factors, but I rarely end up with 1 for 1 functions except for the largest organizations. There are always other considerations, such as AV, patch management, etc. ASB http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker Harnessing the Advantages of Technology for the SMB market... On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Jon Harris <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Personal opinion here but you have way too much stuff on that primary DC comparing it to what I would normally do I would really make that DC a) redundant, b) at least 5 additional servers. I never put file shares on anything but by itself and would do the same thing for each of the management servers (WSUS, GFI, but most especially Symantec). I really hated having Symantec on with anything else it always was needing or doing something that I really did not like. Jon On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 9:00 AM, David Mazzaccaro <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: 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? Well, my first Domain Controller (up until last week, was my ONLY DC) is doing all this: Windows Server 2003 Standard SP2 Domain Controller (holds all 5 FSMO roles) Global Catalog DNS WSUS File Shares (My Documents redirection, all shared drives) GFI Vipre Antimalware server Symantec Backup Exec 10d The remaining boxes are pretty much dedicated: BES (dedicated) OWA (dedicated) Exchange 2003 (dedicated) 3 Citrix 4.0 servers (dedicated) SCO UNIX billing server (dedicated) MAS200 (also Citrix licensing server, web interface server, terminal services profile storage) Document imaging (also my 2nd DC, and print server) From: Jonathan Link [mailto:[email protected]<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]<mailto:[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]<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]<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
