I will be purchasing a new server for the company I work for. The goal is this: 1. Purchase a server to vitalize current hardware config. and consolidate. i.e. take as many old servers out of service and run virtual servers in their place (app server, file server and web server). Note: we are not a data center. We only host/store local files and local apps as well as run an intranet sites. 2. Decide what OS to run on the physical server (Linux or window 2008) 3. Which raid to config. 3. Back up solution. (Tape drive, other..onsite/offsite...maybe a server just for backup????) Current plan. Unbox Dell R7xx Server, install Centos. Install VM Server 2 and add virtual file server, virtual app server and virtual web server with ispconfig. All of the virtual servers will be WinSrv 2008 or WinSrv 2003. 1 physical server, three virtual servers from within.... So, please enlighten me on anything i should think about or give me your best configuration if you had the money to spend on this project. Note: I want to save as much money as possible of course. hAppz
Buy a Thomas-Krenn thomas-krenn.com. Its cheaper an really good quality. The plan is really bad. If the host is down, all services are down. Buy two small servers. 1st Server: DNS1,MAIL ISPConfig Masterserver 2nd Server: ISPConfig DNS2, Backup Mail Server, WEB, File Server Or something like that admins
Thank you for the input admin Just to make sure that this is totally a bad plan I want to add more info. We are not the data center of the company therefore we are a very small operation and one of 50 remote locations. What we have is this: ::One file server running windows srv 2003. It also has two applications running on it. Backup exec and an application using ms-sql 2005. Most of the end-users are mapped to drives on this file server to store their files and PST files. It also runs as our print server. ::One Application Server running windows srv 2000 and handles a corp application. ::One spare server running windows srv 2003 with VMWare 2.0. This is where i run my CENTOS with ispconfig but on a very small scale. NOTE:: no email, no dsn..none of that..Our corp office has the data center with all the DNS and Mail servers and so forth..... The server I want to order will have 6 hard drive in a raid configuration and I plan to have each virtual server backed up via BackupExce (i assume it can be done in a virtual environment). So, if the physical servers hard drive crashes, no lost. If the virtual server becomes corrupted, i should be able to restore from backup....(as i say this it still seems to be a bad idea to run all from one physical srv but please reply.....) Truth be told, this is my first attempt to virtualize this branch of our company. I was given a budget to purchase a new server for our file server and thought that it would be best to purchase a nice server and consolidate via virutalization. Please reply "admin". I would really like to hear from you after reading my added detail. I am here to get that exact type of advice..thank you. Also, anyone else that has virtualized to consolidated your companies servers please respond as well. thanks all! hAppz
Ok, I see.... Take this server: http://www.thomas-krenn.com/de/serv.../2HE-intel-dual-cpu/nehalem-sc823-server.html If you've one CPU Soket you can take Vmware ESXi wich is free, if you've two cpu sockets, you need Vmware ESX. May take care to your backupsolution, I bleive, it needs Vmware ESX... . You can take the Vmware converter and convert the existing server to the new server... adminst
I would recommend a powerfull AMD Quad Core server with 8 GB Ram and 2x500 GB SATA HDD setup as RAID1 - This can be done for approx 600 - 700 USD (Mine is a home build) Then install this 64-bit Amd Debian "Lenny" starting with raid1 setup using this guide: http://www200.pair.com/mecham/raid/raid1.html. Remember only to install base system. Then install ssh and open SSH server: #aptitude install ssh openssh-server remember to setup NIC to be static IP: e.g. 192.168.9.253 or something fitting to your LAN. Then you install VMware 2.0.1 following this guide: http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-2-on-debian-lenny After this you can install your M$ servers - See my admin page here: For backup - install a 3 SATA HDD and make FULL backups of your virtual machines every night and once a week - Then you should be able to restore your full infrastructure within some hours, in case of a brakedown. - I can post a script which will suspend the virtual machines, make a backup and then resume the virtual machines again. I've survived a diskcrash, a CPU burn and a full change of host hardware whiteout loosing data. (there where downtime )
if you want buy 6 disks, create 3 RAID1 volumes, 1. volume for OS and Vmachine1, 2. for Vmachine2, a 3. for Vmachine3. and Install ESXi server, if 1 CPU, 4 cores, is enough. use HW raid controller, with min 256 , battery backuped cache, and min 8 GB of ram. or maybe on volume1:Vmware esx, and 2 OSs and on second raid mount partition to windows OS as fileshare folder.. .... but Vmware server2 is also good solution...
thanks.... I do like this setup I personally would like the backup script for future reference....I will review this more. Thank you!
VMware 2.0.x Linux backup script Here is my script for /etc/cron.daily: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Code: #!/bin/sh # Suspend VMs rather than shutting them down # Guy Leech 10/08/07 # Scipt that suspend all VM => Backup to a place => and start all VM # modified by Siegfried Marechal 03/10/08 # vmhost.localdomain.local Setup made by Denbert 07-08-2009 # Where the VM are VMDIR="/Virtual_Machines/*" # Backup directory BACKUPDIR="/backups/" # Don't forget to specifie password at lines 21 and 31 ******** cd $VMDIR find . -type f -name \*.vmx -printf '[standard] %p\n' | sed 's/ .\// /' | while $ do echo Suspending $LINE ... vmrun -T server -u root -p password -h [url]https://127.0.0.1:8333/sdk[/url] suspend $ done cp -R $VMDIR $BACKUPDIR find . -type f -name \*.vmx -printf '[standard] %p\n' | sed 's/ .\// /' | while read LINE do echo Starting $LINE ... vmrun -T server -u root -p password -h [url]https://127.0.0.1:8333/sdk[/url] start$ done ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is my script for /etc/cron.weekly: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Code: #!/bin/sh # Suspend VMs rather than shutting them down # Guy Leech 10/08/07 # Scipt that suspend all VM => Backup to a place => and start all VM # modified by Siegfried Marechal 03/10/08 # vmhost.localdomain.local Setup made by Denbert 07-08-2009 # Where the VM are VMDIR="/Virtual_Machines/*" # Backup directory BACKUPDIR="/backups/weekly" # Don't forget to specifie password at lines 21 and 31 ******** cd $VMDIR find . -type f -name \*.vmx -printf '[standard] %p\n' | sed 's/ .\// /' | while $ do echo Suspending $LINE ... vmrun -T server -u root -p password -h [url]https://127.0.0.1:8333/sdk[/url] suspend $ done cp -R $VMDIR $BACKUPDIR find . -type f -name \*.vmx -printf '[standard] %p\n' | sed 's/ .\// /' | while read LINE do echo Starting $LINE ... vmrun -T server -u root -p password -h [url]https://127.0.0.1:8333/sdk[/url] start$ done ------------------------------------------------------------------------- My backup SATA HDD (more precausius types might use USB disks and then swap them every morning and store them in a safe place outside the building ) is mounted as /backups Please note that /Virtual_Machines isn't the default vmware dir holding virtual machines.
Thank You. One additional question One more question: I like the ESXi technology. Using full bare metal resouses is exciting. But if I go with ESXi and install on high-end server with a 2, 3 or even 6 hard drive solution I understand it will partition automatically. As far as a fail proof solution though, and as mentioned in the beginnng about "if I lose the host" I will lost all...this concerns me. Till/Falko, this is off topic but might be useful when howto's are created later so I will ask. How can I setup fail proof using ESXi if there is no OS running ESXi? If anyone has used ESXi and implemented a raid please inform me as to how that is done? hAppz
Your concern was also one of my concerns, and the reason for me to choose the Debian OS with VMware on top. With this I can recover my setup within an hour or so. Another problem was the hardware, as ESXi has poor hardware support, and Debian supports almost all hardware on the marked. If you go for the ESXi setup you might look here before you go spend your money
