I don't see a mention about budget. If you have a large (not small)
budget I would first give your information below to rackspace (I did
that many years ago and I am very happy with the performance, support
and cost)
Also, I would check into amazon, M$, Google, etc, other large name cloud
providers that I have no experience with.
If you can find a solution that satisfies your risk tolerance, I would
put all of this in the cloud, (different cloud servers, maybe from
different vendors) except I would have a local backup, copied to DVD on
a regular basis. The reason I like DVD is because any computer can read
them and it is easy to pull a file(s) out of a zipped file if you need
to check something offline. They don't take up much room. We have more
than 12 years of weekly backups on DVD which is as close to permanent as
you can get for 12 cents each.
On 4/13/2016 6:56 AM, Ken Dibble wrote:
Have any of you had experience working with (rather) large virtualized
networks?
It's been suggested that I virtualize my network. To me the advantages
are not clear but the risks are. Since I am old-school and highly
risk-averse when it comes to computer technology, I need to hear
different perspectives from people who are not trying to sell me
anything.
We have 7 servers that are candidates for virtualization on a single
hypervisor.
- Domain controller (currently Linux but may be replaced with Windows)
- Heavily used Linux file server that includes two VFP databases and
serves up a large and growing number of network shares on which many
users depend heavily
- Lightly used Windows Medicaid billing server running software that
is very slow and requires maximum throughput/speed
- Lightly used Windows Accounting server that is running software that
is very slow and requires maximum throughput/speed
- Windows RDP server that has about 15 authorized users; there's slow
growth on this, and it runs separate instances of my VFP application
for some of those users.
- Windows Document management server
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Antivirus server (not a Windows server OS)
The Accounting and Medicaid boxes both have SQL Server Express
databases, and there is client software on the workstations that
access it, but the servers also have additional software installed as
well. So it does not appear to me that this is either fully fat
client-thin server or fully server-hosted software.
The network has about 130 workstations, connected through four gigabit
switches, and there is moderate growth on that. We have a 25 Mbps
synchronous internet connection and it is heavily used by many
workstations. There are only a couple of network printers; most people
have desktop printers.
There is a VoIP phone server on a separate physical network but which
is connected to the computer network for remote-access purposes and to
enable use of "switchboard" software on a few workstations.
There are two other servers on the network that are not candidates for
virtualization:
- Fax server; has legacy dedicated hardware
- Backup server, which is almost constantly either running scripts to
backup and transfer data from the other servers, to itself and to a
removable drive, or having data fed to it from other servers.
Total "live" data on the network servers is about 1 TB; we can expect
slow-to-moderate growth on that.
The risks it seems to me are:
1. Fail-over: If the hypervisor goes down, nobody, but nobody, can do
any work. Therefore I need a redundant mirrored system on a separate
box, and a robust mechanism to continuously mirror the data without
affecting performance. Is that really possible?
2. What is going to be the real, day-to-day effect of using a
virtualized RDP server in a stack of other virtualized servers, some
of which have heavy intranet traffic? I do not want to be in a
situation where I'm told there are no worries and then, this system is
installed, and the thing is dog-slow.
3. In fact, I don't want that to happen in relation to any of the
applications we are using. What is a realistic expectation on this?
If the reality is that I will be assuming greater risks than I face
now with separate physical servers, and those risks cannot be
mitigated effectively, then are there any countervailing advantages to
virtualization that would be great enough to justify making this change?
Thanks to all for the benefit of your experience.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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