Is it time to replace our servers and server OS?
Hi All,
I am IT Manager for a business of 50 employees, spread over 4 offices.
We have two physical servers: 1 with SBS 2008 and Exchange 2007 + 1 Terminal server. Both of these servers are DELL Poweredge 2900 Model and each is 6.5 years in age.
These servers are growing more and more buggy mainly do to OS's having run so long (and hardware slowing as well).
I want to replace with one physical server, and run (3) visualized 2012 Server OS's, Exchange, Domain Controller, and Terminal Services.
It's a bit of a hard sell to company owners but in my opinion the time as come. If these servers were to fail our company could easily be down better part of a week as have to order replacement hardware, and re-build system from scratch.
AM I JUSTIFIED IN MY THINKING HERE??
Thanks,
Steve
I am IT Manager for a business of 50 employees, spread over 4 offices.
We have two physical servers: 1 with SBS 2008 and Exchange 2007 + 1 Terminal server. Both of these servers are DELL Poweredge 2900 Model and each is 6.5 years in age.
These servers are growing more and more buggy mainly do to OS's having run so long (and hardware slowing as well).
I want to replace with one physical server, and run (3) visualized 2012 Server OS's, Exchange, Domain Controller, and Terminal Services.
It's a bit of a hard sell to company owners but in my opinion the time as come. If these servers were to fail our company could easily be down better part of a week as have to order replacement hardware, and re-build system from scratch.
AM I JUSTIFIED IN MY THINKING HERE??
Thanks,
Steve
ASKER
Owners want 100% in-house, cannot convince them to go to cloud... besides.. We own Office 2013 Open Licensing and plan to use for next several years. Most of our files are autocad and are very, very large.
Hi:
SBS is a very resilient OS and could probably be rescued or even reinstalled. To reinstall and bring current with updates would be a lot of work however. And if the hardware is actually showing signs of age it may very well be time to move on. For 50 users consider Server Standard with the Essentials role. This gives you an SBS like dashboard, PC backup, and Remote Web Access aka Access Anywhere.
The Essentials role takes one of the VM's, RDS or Exchange would consume the other. For O365 then the second box could be RDS or any other role of your choosing.
SBS is a very resilient OS and could probably be rescued or even reinstalled. To reinstall and bring current with updates would be a lot of work however. And if the hardware is actually showing signs of age it may very well be time to move on. For 50 users consider Server Standard with the Essentials role. This gives you an SBS like dashboard, PC backup, and Remote Web Access aka Access Anywhere.
The Essentials role takes one of the VM's, RDS or Exchange would consume the other. For O365 then the second box could be RDS or any other role of your choosing.
For more proof to present to owners, you can inventory, and report on your existing network, i.e. CPU, network, and disk I/O time, etc. with Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit. This will give you hard numbers to help decide on hardware. Install it on a workstation and let it run for a few weeks or so.
If you are a Dell shop, ask your Dell supplier for a copy of DPACK Collectors, which is similar to MAP Toolkit.
About DPACK Collectors
Dell’s Performance Analysis Collection Kit or DPACK is a point in time performance capture technology donated to the community by Dell, Inc. to promote awareness of actual compute performance needs, specifically as it applies to understanding physical or virtual server workload performance at the individual machine, workgroup, or datacenter level.
DPACK’s “Collector” supports the many-to-one monitoring of the most popular operating systems in the market. The unique logic provided in the program gives you the ability to look at performance at the individual drive level, simulate the effect of combining workloads, or even evaluate cloud candidacy.
The collector is non-invasive, will make no modifications to your environment, and only runs for the duration you choose.
The result is unique data insight that helps remove ambiguity when running your Data Center.
If you are a Dell shop, ask your Dell supplier for a copy of DPACK Collectors, which is similar to MAP Toolkit.
About DPACK Collectors
Dell’s Performance Analysis Collection Kit or DPACK is a point in time performance capture technology donated to the community by Dell, Inc. to promote awareness of actual compute performance needs, specifically as it applies to understanding physical or virtual server workload performance at the individual machine, workgroup, or datacenter level.
DPACK’s “Collector” supports the many-to-one monitoring of the most popular operating systems in the market. The unique logic provided in the program gives you the ability to look at performance at the individual drive level, simulate the effect of combining workloads, or even evaluate cloud candidacy.
The collector is non-invasive, will make no modifications to your environment, and only runs for the duration you choose.
The result is unique data insight that helps remove ambiguity when running your Data Center.
If you are keeping one server and keeping DC, Exchange and Terminal Server all on one server. You have a single point of failure. If your customer is okay with that risk, you can goahead with one server.
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