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Virtualization Question

Hi I am new to virtualization and want to run this by the memebership. I am looking to virtualize two different servers on a physical Windows 2008 server with Hyper-V. The physical server is 32gb ram, Dell T610 with (6) 300gb SAS drives in raid configuration with 1.3tb available in (1) large l drive. (2) XEON 5620 processors at 2.4ghz. In Windows it lists 16 cores. If you need more hardware info let me know.

What I would like to do if possible is setup the host OS with Windows 2008 server with Hyper-V and have a virtual server for SBS2008 server and an additional virual server for Windows 2008 server running terminal server and Filemaker Pro. as well as Microsoft Office that would be available for 10 users on the entire system.

I would appreciate if you can give me pointers as far as raid configuration, memory suggestions, any virtualization tips/advice.

Thanks in advance!!

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ThorinO

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sccomputer

ASKER

Hi ThorinO thank you for your response. So I am assuming you mean raid 5 with 1 large drive and no partions?

What about things like the amout of ram dedicated to the host/ amout of ram to allocate to the guest os's.
How should the virtual disks be created, sized location. etc. Should I creat virtual drives for sbs for the os,exchange db and a seperate one for logs?

Thanks!!

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ThorinO

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kevinhsieh

I would create a VHD for each drive letter that you plan on using for your VMs. Maybe a C drive for OS, D drive for shares, E drive for Exchange DB and F drive for Exchange logs. Something similar for your filemaker/remote desktop server. Your system is beefy enough for maybe 100+ users so performance should be good. I would give maybe 16 GB RAM to the SBS VM and 6 GB to your filemaker/Remote Desktop server. You can always change the RAM, CPU, and disk assigned to each VM. Be sure to apply the Hyper-V hotfixes. They are not available via Windows Update. Do a google search for Hyper-V hotfixes and you will find a technet page that shows all of them.

sccomputer

ASKER

Thanks guys for your help with this. I am leaning toward the solution that Kevin suggested with sepertate disks for the os partitons to mimic a typical hardware based install of both sbs2008 and server 2008 terminal server.

Thanks again!!

kevinhsieh

My suggestion is to keep all VHD files on same RAID set, but use a new VHD for every drive letter in your VMs. There is no reason to partition a VHD into multiple drive letters, and several problems with doing that. The reasons for partitioning a physical disk don't exist when virtualizing.

sccomputer

ASKER

Had another question that I came up with that I thought I would pose to you guys. The physical server has two quad core E6520 Xenon processors. Any thoughts on how to allocate those in the vm's? Does each vm get a single processor? Two processors? More than that?

Any thoughts on this guys??