Virtualization survey / hardware best practices etc...

markm75 · 12-02-2007, 07:23 PM

I am about to implement MS VS 2005 R2 sp1 with Virtual machine manager 2007 in our domain of about 4 servers and 40 users (40 workstations)..

We have typically purchased these 2u supermicro 8 removable drive bay cases.. they can take sataII or SAS.. Budget wise we have been sticking with sataII, due to the fact on this target VS server it will hold about 600gb of data.. I always mirror the OS drives.. this leaves 6 drives to work with.

I'm pondering one single quad core 2.33ghz xeon.. or dual 2.33's.. or maybe one 2.83.. figuring on 4gb of memory, running x64 2003 (we are going with MS VS due to MSDN, free,etc)..

This server (the old one that is being replaced).. ran Great plains (sql 2005), System Config Manager 2007 (sql 2005), Live Comm server 2007 (sql 2005), Virtual Machine Manager (sql 2005), file serving, and a ups shipping program/database.

I had about 1gb free memory with all this (non virtualized)... I'm thinking i may want to get 6gb memory instead of 4gb.

So i figured i'd virtualize at least the system center apps (CM, LCS, VMM) and maybe great plains, into seperate Virtual servers on the same box.

What would be the best way to do so here? Or would i need to go outside of an 8 drive capacity box.. say 12.. to have enough to put each VS on a seperate mirror..

I typically just have Mirror for the OS, raid5 for everything else.. i was thinking i'd need to squeeze in one more mirror and split say 2 VS on raid5 and 2 VS on the mirror set...

I've heard various interpretations of best practices here.. in fact someone once said running 5 VS off a LUN on a SAN would be ok to do.. so i'm not sure why or if i'd need to split these up onto seperate arrays or not..

I also dont know if inside the VS.. if i should actually be putting each sql instance inside them and if so.. if i should "pretend" they are "real" and create seperate VHDs for C drive and D drive (logs, data for sql).. and/or put the vhds for each drive letter for a given VS on a seperate physical host array/volume?

Thanks for any thoughts on this one.

12-02-2007, 07:23 PM	#1 (permalink)
markm75 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Western PA Posts: 383 OS: Vista x64	Virtualization survey / hardware best practices etc... I am about to implement MS VS 2005 R2 sp1 with Virtual machine manager 2007 in our domain of about 4 servers and 40 users (40 workstations).. We have typically purchased these 2u supermicro 8 removable drive bay cases.. they can take sataII or SAS.. Budget wise we have been sticking with sataII, due to the fact on this target VS server it will hold about 600gb of data.. I always mirror the OS drives.. this leaves 6 drives to work with. I'm pondering one single quad core 2.33ghz xeon.. or dual 2.33's.. or maybe one 2.83.. figuring on 4gb of memory, running x64 2003 (we are going with MS VS due to MSDN, free,etc).. This server (the old one that is being replaced).. ran Great plains (sql 2005), System Config Manager 2007 (sql 2005), Live Comm server 2007 (sql 2005), Virtual Machine Manager (sql 2005), file serving, and a ups shipping program/database. I had about 1gb free memory with all this (non virtualized)... I'm thinking i may want to get 6gb memory instead of 4gb. So i figured i'd virtualize at least the system center apps (CM, LCS, VMM) and maybe great plains, into seperate Virtual servers on the same box. What would be the best way to do so here? Or would i need to go outside of an 8 drive capacity box.. say 12.. to have enough to put each VS on a seperate mirror.. I typically just have Mirror for the OS, raid5 for everything else.. i was thinking i'd need to squeeze in one more mirror and split say 2 VS on raid5 and 2 VS on the mirror set... I've heard various interpretations of best practices here.. in fact someone once said running 5 VS off a LUN on a SAN would be ok to do.. so i'm not sure why or if i'd need to split these up onto seperate arrays or not.. I also dont know if inside the VS.. if i should actually be putting each sql instance inside them and if so.. if i should "pretend" they are "real" and create seperate VHDs for C drive and D drive (logs, data for sql).. and/or put the vhds for each drive letter for a given VS on a seperate physical host array/volume? Thanks for any thoughts on this one.