I mentioned in another thread that this summer I'm looking at migrating our first servers from Server 2003 to Server 2008, migrating from Exchange 2003 to 2007, and consolidating a couple of servers. Good times.
I want to make use of server virtualization, which I've never played with before. My vision is to have a big central server for our organization that runs Exchange, our web sites, and handles FSMO roles in separate VMs. Any thoughts/input/caveats on this idea? We're a small organization--around 550 users. We currently have Exchange and our web sites running on the same physical server with no problems, and that server is 5 years old. It has more than enough horse power to handle these tasks, but is reaching the end of its life. Maybe there's no need to separate things into different VMs. I know that in the past, it wasn't considered a best practice to run Exchange on a DC. That's why I was looking at putting Exchange in its own VM, and then having a separate VM that is a DC and handles FSMO roles. But then, is there a need to put the DC and FSMO roles in its own VM vs. just being handled by the host OS? And my reason for running IIS in its own VM was for security--if some sort of exploit allows IIS to be hacked, the hacker would be isolated from other functions of the server. But maybe that's paranoia; I know IIS's and Windows' security have improved quite a bit from back when I first started cutting my teeth. John Hornbuckle MIS Department Taylor County School District 318 North Clark Street Perry, FL 32347 www.taylor.k12.fl.us ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
