Hyper V Recommendations / Advice

oB1

Hi All,

Im looking for some opinions & advice on getting a Hyper V environment up and running.

This is purely for learning purposes, I am a Computing Student and want to mess around with some server systems within a Hyper V environment.

I have some cash saved up to invest in some lab equipment, such as:

>> Gigabit & POE Switches
>> Racking Infra
>> Servers
>> Cabling

Not to say all of this is going to be brand new :P

Im looking for advice on what type of server and server spec i need to go for, considering these servers are going to be hosting multiple virtual servers.

Obviously ill need a decent amount of RAM, Hard Drive Space, and good processing power.

Ideally, id buy two brand new Dell Poweredge R610... but thats WAAAAY over my budget :eek::P

Im thinking along the lines of buying Two Dell Poweredge 2950's (second hand ,of course) .. loading them up with RAM and Hard Drives.. and setting them both up in a fail-over cluster.

that's where im at , at the moment.

Any advice/recommendations would be of help to me!

Oh, and i have a MSDN subscription..so i don't have to worry about licensing stuff.

Cheers!

Rob

puffishoes

I'd just get the cheapest you can that will allow you to stuff the most amount ram in it.

gerryR

Wouldn't worry too much about storage in the servers, by rights all you should have installed on them is the Hypervisor.

You'll need some sort of shared storage for the virtual machine files, some NAS box that supports iSCSI would be the cheapest option, won't be the best from a performance point of view but fine for test env

oB1

gerryR wrote: »

Wouldn't worry too much about storage in the servers, by rights all you should have installed on them is the Hypervisor.

You'll need some sort of shared storage for the virtual machine files, some NAS box that supports iSCSI would be the cheapest option, won't be the best from a performance point of view but fine for test env

Ok so you think i should have the VMs stored on a NAS box, via iSCSI? - what if i got another server box, loaded it up with HD's and installed Storage Server 2008 r2 on it, use it as NAS box? ( Was thinking about that before )

R

puffishoes

RobertHopkins wrote: »

Ok so you think i should have the VMs stored on a NAS box, via iSCSI? - what if i got another server box, loaded it up with HD's and installed Storage Server 2008 r2 on it, use it as NAS box? ( Was thinking about that before )

R

it doesn't really matter what way you go. it's a test environment. go with the most bang for buck. if you can find a ****ty little box and run freeNAS with a ton of cheap disks it'll be fine.

oB1

puffishoes wrote: »

it doesn't really matter what way you go. it's a test environment. go with the most bang for buck. if you can find a ****ty little box and run freeNAS with a ton of cheap disks it'll be fine.

Excellent point.. the only reason why i say install storage server from MS.. is because i get it for free with my MSDN sub..

RE: My idea of the 2950's.. would they be worthy enough for VM's?... i think they have two sockets.. Dual Xeon's .. they dont come with much RAM.. but i assume i can buy cheap from somewhere.. or does it have to be specific from somewhere..?

R

puffishoes

RobertHopkins wrote: »

Excellent point.. the only reason why i say install storage server from MS.. is because i get it for free with my MSDN sub..

RE: My idea of the 2950's.. would they be worthy enough for VM's?... i think they have two sockets.. Dual Xeon's .. they dont come with much RAM.. but i assume i can buy cheap from somewhere.. or does it have to be specific from somewhere..?

R

I would imagine the system requirements for storage server are a lot more beefy than say ubuntu server running samba or something similar.

2950's maxed out with RAM will be fine. but i mean what's your end goal here? to learn how to configure hyper-V? or?

I'd probably put the time into vsphere and do a VCP exam I imagine it'd be a lot more sough after but if it's just config I don't understand why you need all this infrastrcutre?

oB1

puffishoes wrote: »

I would imagine the system requirements for storage server are a lot more beefy than say ubuntu server running samba or something similar.

2950's maxed out with RAM will be fine. but i mean what's your end goal here? to learn how to configure hyper-V? or?

I'd probably put the time into vsphere and do a VCP exam I imagine it'd be a lot more sough after but if it's just config I don't understand why you need all this infrastrcutre?

Not really... its a dumbed down version of Server 2008 R2.. specifically designed for storage servers..

My end goal.. well.. dont really have "A" end goal.. with my MSDN sub that i have, it allows me to download any and every MS product under the sun.. i want / need the infra & HW to test it.. and learn all i can .. im studying for a Computing degree.. so it will come in useful..

Im more of a fan of Hyper V, rather than VMWare.. although its a sizable product.

puffishoes

RobertHopkins wrote: »

Not really... its a dumbed down version of Server 2008 R2.. specifically designed for storage servers..

My end goal.. well.. dont really have "A" end goal.. with my MSDN sub that i have, it allows me to download any and every MS product under the sun.. i want / need the infra & HW to test it.. and learn all i can .. im studying for a Computing degree.. so it will come in useful..

Im more of a fan of Hyper V, rather than VMWare.. although its a sizable product.

It's all well and good been a "fan" but I assume you will eventually want to get a job.....vmware,citrix and even RH are miles ahead and you'll be a lot more marketable with vmware

just imho tho.

oB1

puffishoes wrote: »

It's all well and good been a "fan" but I assume you will eventually want to get a job.....vmware,citrix and even RH are miles ahead and you'll be a lot more marketable with vmware

just imho tho.

Your right there - i suppose i am a little naive in this case.

if i where to go the path of VMWare.. would i have to pay big bucks?

Enigma IE

You can download and use Vmware ESXi, it's free and has plenty of features. As other posters have said, try get your hands on a cheap NAS box - it must support iSCSI. You won't need much local storage on the servers, ESXi itself is tiny. I think there's a limit of 32GB ram, 2 procs to use ESXi.

With ESXI, you will be up and running in a matter of hours, unlike Hyper-V, which would take considerably longer.

oB1

Enigma IE wrote: »

You can download and use Vmware ESXi, it's free and has plenty of features. As other posters have said, try get your hands on a cheap NAS box - it must support iSCSI. You won't need much local storage on the servers, ESXi itself is tiny. I think there's a limit of 32GB ram, 2 procs to use ESXi.

With ESXI, you will be up and running in a matter of hours, unlike Hyper-V, which would take considerably longer.

Excellent, i didn't know that.

i just assumed it would be a paid for product.

Great - yeah as i mentioned above, ill probably find a cheap server box.. fill it full of hot swap drives, and install storage server 2008 r2.. i "THINK" that has iSCSI capabilities..

CptSternn

ESXi has some hefty requirements though. VMWare Server is free and you can run it on any computer no matter the hardware.

If you just are looking to play with a virtual environment why buy all this hardware? As mentioned above, you can slap hyper-v or vmware server on an old desktop PC and achieve the same effect. Sure, it won't be all that fast, but if you are not running it for any real purpose and just want to play with the interface and learn the software a bit it seems a tad excessive to buy all that hardware IMHO.

oB1

CptSternn wrote: »

ESXi has some hefty requirements though. VMWare Server is free and you can run it on any computer no matter the hardware.

If you just are looking to play with a virtual environment why buy all this hardware? As mentioned above, you can slap hyper-v or vmware server on an old desktop PC and achieve the same effect. Sure, it won't be all that fast, but if you are not running it for any real purpose and just want to play with the interface and learn the software a bit it seems a tad excessive to buy all that hardware IMHO.

Yeah you make a good point.

I suppose i should point out that, i already have played around with, and have a fair bit of knowledge on Hyper Virtualization.. i want a bigger experience etc..

I currently have ONE Dell box, running my exchange setup.. so i host my own emails.. id be looking to expand the features and capabilities of this.. using HyperV / VMWare..

swampgas

Remember too that once you have your Hyper-V or VMware ESXi server installed, you can create a VM to act as an NFS or iSCSI server and point the server at that - a bit inception-like, but it works (on ESXi anyway).

I often use Ubuntu to host NFS and/or iSCSI, give the VM a big disk and share it back out to the ESXi, then store VMs on that.

Google "white box ESXi" if you're looking at cheap hardware for messing about with ESXi though, you don't need to buy supported server hardware.

CptSternn

RobertHopkins wrote: »

I currently have ONE Dell box, running my exchange setup.. so i host my own emails.. id be looking to expand the features and capabilities of this.. using HyperV / VMWare..

I take it you are running an older version of Exchange then? I say this because the newer versions like 2007 and 2010 require multiple servers to operate and are as different as night and day to their earlier predecessors.

oB1

CptSternn wrote: »

I take it you are running an older version of Exchange then? I say this because the newer versions like 2007 and 2010 require multiple servers to operate and are as different as night and day to their earlier predecessors.

No, I have ONE Single DELL Server, 4gb RAM, 1tb HDD, Xeon Processor.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Running Exchange 2010:

>>Mailbox
>>Hub Transport
>>Client Access

A single install of Exchange 2007 / 2010 with the required roles (as above) can function on its own, quite efficiently.

It is when you add more roles and features, you need to have multiple servers, such as UM (Unified Messaging), etc...

My server has been running non-stop for the last year, hosting my Emails, with a small web service running through IIS for the OWA feature.

No where does it say, you NEED to have multiple servers to run exchange 2007 / 2010

Rob

CptSternn

So you have no fail over protection, no clustering, no edge servers, no UM, and I take it no proper SAN for the mailboxes either? I guess you could run it that way, but it goes against every single best practice model out there and if you have more than a handful of accounts and active users daily it would cause the server to come to a crawl.

Then there is the cost issue. How much are you paying to keep that server up? How much did it cost to deploy? You can go with Office Online and pay Microsoft to do the hosting for you, for a few euro a month per user. Once you factor in the cost of the server, software, maintenance package, helpdesk which deals with the issues, backups, and the cost of the person who is qualified to run the thing for that few number of users you will find you can get away with paying Microsoft about €65 a year (that for about 12 users) to do all the work and host the thing for you themselves sure.

If you really wanted to knock down the costs you could go with Google, GoDaddy, or any of a number of other companies which do the same thing, even cheaper.

Exchange 2007 and 2010 are made for large Enterprise environments. I have setup many for a list of companies and government bodies here in Ireland. It just makes no sense to run it in a small business environment all on one server. If a client came to me with needs less than 100 users I would definitely point them to a hosted Exchange environment instead of doing it themselves for the above reasons sure.

But I don't want to go off topic sure!

oB1

CptSternn wrote: »

So you have no fail over protection, no clustering, no edge servers, no UM, and I take it no proper SAN for the mailboxes either? I guess you could run it that way, but it goes against every single best practice model out there and if you have more than a handful of accounts and active users daily it would cause the server to come to a crawl.

Then there is the cost issue. How much are you paying to keep that server up? How much did it cost to deploy? You can go with Office Online and pay Microsoft to do the hosting for you, for a few euro a month per user. Once you factor in the cost of the server, software, maintenance package, helpdesk which deals with the issues, backups, and the cost of the person who is qualified to run the thing for that few number of users you will find you can get away with paying Microsoft about €65 a year (that for about 12 users) to do all the work and host the thing for you themselves sure.

If you really wanted to knock down the costs you could go with Google, GoDaddy, or any of a number of other companies which do the same thing, even cheaper.

Exchange 2007 and 2010 are made for large Enterprise environments. I have setup many for a list of companies and government bodies here in Ireland. It just makes no sense to run it in a small business environment all on one server. If a client came to me with needs less than 100 users I would definitely point them to a hosted Exchange environment instead of doing it themselves for the above reasons sure.

But I don't want to go off topic sure!

I couldn't agree more! - Everything you said is a fare point, if i where in a REAL Environment, with actual end users, i would do it a completely different way.

BUT As you said yourself, that is completely off topic, unless you didn't pick up on the fact? : This is my PERSONAL Exchange Environment, with just the ONE Mailbox that is used concurrently.. I am running it in a LAB ENVIRONMENT.. its not really a production server.. i mean.. i have a GMail if it all goes tits up..

BUT, That is all part of my quest, ( Mentioned in my original post) to invest in more server hardware.. go virtual etc.. and deploy multiple exchange servers.. for the different Roles etc..

I'd LOVE to invest in a SAN.. but im not sure id have the $ for that.. i think there pretty expensive .. what i was going to do.. is buy a rack mount server.. fill it full of drives.. and set up iSCSI for the VMs..

My DOMAIN Is hosted by GoDaddy .. I have a backup MX hosted by them, so if my server cannot be reached, they will cache all my mails, and then release them when my server is back online.

As mentioned, again , in my original post.. i have a MSDN Subscription.. That entitles me to at least Trial Office 365.. which i took advantage off some time back.. i used it for 30 days.. even setup the AD Sync functionality .. after the 30days where up.. i reverted back to my internal exchange setup.

I wasn't all that impressed by office 365 to be honest.. and its learning i want to do.. so having it internally hosted, was preferable in my case.

Rob

CptSternn

Fair enough. just be aware that once you have it in a real Enterprise environment and spread the roles across groups of clusters servers it becomes a whole new ballgame sure.

joe_elway

3 PCs, 1 switch, 2 extra quad port NIC cards, 1 extra 1 port NIC card ... and I have a lab for WS2012 Hyper-V that I can cluster on, do Live Migration (without any of the limits of vMotion), and I do it all from my TechNet account ... all enough to write a 600 page book on the topic.

Oh yeah: just about every major consulting company in the country has started training on Hyper-V because (a) it's free and (b) it now offers more than vSphere 5.1. Go on: let the hate begin ... even VMware marketing couldn't win against me

oB1

joe_elway wrote: »

3 PCs, 1 switch, 2 extra quad port NIC cards, 1 extra 1 port NIC card ... and I have a lab for WS2012 Hyper-V that I can cluster on, do Live Migration (without any of the limits of vMotion), and I do it all from my TechNet account ... all enough to write a 600 page book on the topic.

Oh yeah: just about every major consulting company in the country has started training on Hyper-V because (a) it's free and (b) it now offers more than vSphere 5.1. Go on: let the hate begin ... even VMware marketing couldn't win against me

I went and bought 3 Dell PowerEdge 1950 III's - 32gb RAM each, 2x Quad Core XEON Processors EACH for dirt cheap, it was a steal

They all have quad gigabit NIC's and the switch is also a gigabit managed switch.

I also bought a brand new PowerEdge R310 and have about 6TB of storage, trying to set up an iSCSI SAN at the moment, but thats new territory to me, its a difficult one.

Same as myself, i have an MSDN subscription, so software is FREEEEE

Rob