First, here=92s a little background on my environment. I run a very
small IT dept for a non-profit in TN. I have successfully used Win SBS
2003 since early 2006. SBS 2003 is currently installed on an extinct
Dell PE1600 with ancient processors, only 4 GB ram and extremely
limited hard drive space.
I purchased a Dell PE 2900 server with:
2 - Intel XEON Quad E5420 procs
24 GB - PC 5300 ram
8 x 146 GB 10k SAS HDs
2 x 1 TB 7200 SATA 3 HDs for data
2 extra Intel Pro dual nics - for 6 nics total
Is the server I purchased capable of accomplishing the following?
Migrating my current SBS 2003 environment to SBS 2008 virtualized on
Hyper-V:
1 - Windows Small Business Server 2008
2 =96 Secondary Windows 2008 Server R2 with SQL Server 2005 or 8
3 - A Windows 2008 Server R2 application server for Peachtree, ACT and
our task management software
Allocating NICs, ram, and hard drive space within the virtual
environment is where I am most confused. This will be my first
virtualized setup so I really would love some assistance in its proper
configuration.
Hard Drives:
The "Microsoft Virtualizing SBS" doc suggests that separate RAID-1
hard drives be used for the host OS and EACH of the Server VMs. What
would be the best way to partition them or could you suggest a better
method? (Since this would use up all 8 SAS drives on the server, I'd
really prefer another solution.) I also had a suggestion to use 2x SAS
in RAID 1 for 146 GB of storage for the Host OS. Then RAID 10 the
other 6x SAS drives for 438 GB of storage. Good idea?
What about the 2 - 1TB SATA drives? I was planning on using them as
data drive(s) for the VMs. How should I set this up? Do I RAID-1 them
and divvy up a portion of the resulting 1 TB into separate VHDs to be
used for each of the VMs AND create a separate partition to be used as
our network shared data drive? I have no clue how vm's utilize data
drives. Note that I also have a 3 TB NETGEAR ReadyNAS 2100 ISCSI
available if this would be a better storage solution for our
environment.
RAM:
How do I determine the proper ram allocation? Is 24 GB total ram
enough? I calculated 4 GB for the Hyper-V host. The SBS doc says 4 GB
virtual memory each for the main SBS server and the extra Win 2k8
server. Does the virtual memory I assign have to equal physical
memory? Suggestions?
Regarding the SBS migration.
With the proposed setup being virtual on Hyper-V, I won=92t have access
to a USB device for the answer file. Should I create a VFD and mount
the answer file on it? Are there instructions for this somewhere?
Questions regarding my current environment:
Are any of these an issue during 2003 to 2008 migration?
- The admin account on my current SBS server has been renamed.
- My current SBS box is no longer the DHCP server on my network, my
hardware firewall has this role.
Thanks for any and all comments or suggestions!
Chris