I'd second John on the maintenance of a physical DC, since your vCenter will almost always be AD-integrated—it makes life vastly easier. We also maintain a physical vCenter in case of whole-datacenter shutdown.
We have four production hosts here with about 110 VMs (Server 2003, 2008, 2008R2, Windows 7, and various Linux) linked to SAN storage over iSCSI (was gigabit, now 10GbE). We also have two hosts for a test environment so we can simulate fun things like total datacenter failures, etc. Running all the good stuff like Exchange, SQL Server, StrongMail marketing servers, entirely on the virtual environment. You mentioned you have an existing Backup Exec license—if you want to keep using that, I'd suggest buying the VMware agent from them and using it to take VM-level backups as you move forward. You'll still get file-level restore capability but you can also just roll out a whole new image of a machine if you completely lose your environment. We had good luck with Backup Exec as long as we didn't use the deduplication storage option (that reliably crapped itself at about 8TB of used storage). ---- Jack Kramer Manager of Information Technology Communications and Brand Strategy Michigan State University w: 517-884-1231 / c: 248-635-4955 From: John Cook <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: NT System Admin Issues <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 10:28 AM To: NT System Admin Issues <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: RE: moving to virtual 3 5.0 hosts in main Datacenter and another in a separate future DR location. Both setups are iSCSI. Probably 25ish VMs, a mix of XP, W7, Server 2003, 2008 and 2008R2 running Exchange 2010, SQL 2008, email archiving, BES, AV, DCs, ect….. I DO maintain a physical DC in case of that whole datacenter shutdown. Bringing it up first helps tremendously. John W. Cook Network Operations Manager Partnership For Strong Families 5950 NW 1st Place Gainesville, Fl 32607 Office (352) 244-1610 Cell (352) 215-6944 MCSE, MCP+I, MCTS, CompTIA A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 9:53 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: moving to virtual Glad to hear it. Thanks. How many servers/users/devices you managing? From: John Cook [mailto:[email protected]]<mailto:[mailto:[email protected]]> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 9:33 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: moving to virtual Which is exactly how we have it set up. A host failure on any level goes unnoticed by the end users plus we can do host updates during business hours, it really makes life easier to not have to come in after hours to do this and with your one man shop (I’m with you) it is essential for not hitting the burnout wall trying to keep up. John W. Cook Network Operations Manager Partnership For Strong Families 5950 NW 1st Place Gainesville, Fl 32607 Office (352) 244-1610 Cell (352) 215-6944 MCSE, MCP+I, MCTS, CompTIA A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 9:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: moving to virtual 3 hosts will give me an n+1 configuration. I assume I will need 2 hosts to run my environment, and having 3 will allow for 1 to be down. Unless you are saying 1 host is enough to run everything and the 2nd host would still give me redundancy? From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]]<mailto:[mailto:[email protected]]> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 5:02 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: moving to virtual The 8 cores vs 6 cores is really not apples to apples in this case, and while you will almost always be better off going with the best you can afford at a given moment, the truth is that you'll be positively fine with 6-cores. The key, as others have already mentioned is RAM -- closely followed by disk. CPU is a bit further out. Get tons of RAM. Now, I have to ask. Why 3 hosts? You only have 8 systems to virtualize, plus some growth. Define the reasonable range of growth for 1 year? 4 VMs? 8 VMs? Unless you said, "20 VMs", I'd be very much inclined to tell you to save yourself the hardware and licensing costs of one host server right now. We're running dozens of production VMs across a pair of quad-core host servers. For 190 users, you'll be fine. I second Brian on the NetApp recommendation. As for the services part of the quote, why do you think the $28K is unrealistic? What are the quoted timeframes for the project? What is the proposed scope of work? Regards, ASB http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker Harnessing the Advantages of Technology for the SMB market… On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 3:36 PM, David Mazzaccaro <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Greetings, Getting very close to moving into the VM world,and have a couple of questions… 1) I am trying to figure out if I should go with 8 core or 6 core processors in my 3 hosts for my upcoming VMware environment. The price is about double. And I’m not sure I need 8 cores. The layout that has been quoted is as follows: 3 hosts connected to a PS4100XV SAN running VMware Essentials Plus Kit. The host servers I am looking at are either: HP DL360 G8 2x Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 (6 core, 2.50 GHz, 15MB, 95W) $5356 each HP DL360 G8 2x Intel® Xeon® E5-2690 (8 core, 2.90 GHz, 20MB, 135W) $10,061 each I currently have 8 physical servers(Win2003, E2003, Citrix 4.0)that we will be P2V’d. After I P2V the servers, the plan is to begin creating new Windows 2008 R2 VMs and migrating each server’s role (2008R2 domain, Exchange 2010, and Citrix XenApp 6.5). I want enough power to be able to run my existing 8 servers in a virtual environmentand migrate them to AD2008/E2010/XenApp as well as leave some room for testing and growth. 2 of the vendors said 6 core is fine,another vendor is quoting 8 core processors. 2) The quotes I have for the“services” part of this are: $40,000 ($12k for AD/Exch, $8k for XenApp 20k for VMware) $38,000 (not itemized) $28,000 ($11k for AD/Ex,$6k XenApp, $11k for VM) Do these sound legit? I have ~190 users if that helps. I really think 28k is either too aggressive or simply not realistic. This is the same vendor who quoted me(3) single processor servers, so I have to go back to them and tell them I want dual proc. 3) For the SAN, I have 2 options: PS4100XV (12 600GB 15k SAS) $23,000 NetApp FAS2240 (12 600GB 10k SAS) $22,000 I have 2 vendors pushing the PS4100XV, and the other pushingthe NetApp. >From what I have been told, I’llget better IOPS w/ the 15k drives in the >Equalogic. And fuller feature set. Any one w/ experiences w/either of these models want to add their $.02? 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