Advice on new Server provisioning
Hi,
We've taken delivery of our new Dell Server and are working on documenting the migration from our old server, which is primarily a file server but also hosts 3 Virtual Servers. The shares for the department are currently all on the host which is a member of the domain. These 3 virtual servers are used for:
The server has the following spec:
I can't decide whether we should create a VM for the file server and move all the shares to that VM or use the host as the file server. The shares total around 400GB, so we'd need to allow 1TB for the file server VM.
Also with the other VMs, each needs to connect to an instance of MSSQL, do we take advantage of the speed of the SSDs and install SQL on the host, then the VM connects to that instance, or just keep everything on its own VM.
So we'd have an SQL VM and the other VMs connect to this. All VMs are stored on the data partition.
Any advice is appreciated.
We've taken delivery of our new Dell Server and are working on documenting the migration from our old server, which is primarily a file server but also hosts 3 Virtual Servers. The shares for the department are currently all on the host which is a member of the domain. These 3 virtual servers are used for:
- Our project management software including MSSQL 2016
- Crestron room booking server
- Low resource application server
The server has the following spec:
- Windows Server 2016 Standard
- 2 x Xeon 2650v4
- 64GB Memory
- Raid 1 2 x 400GB SSD for System partition
- Raid 10 6 x SAS Drives totalling 3.27GB Data partition
I can't decide whether we should create a VM for the file server and move all the shares to that VM or use the host as the file server. The shares total around 400GB, so we'd need to allow 1TB for the file server VM.
Also with the other VMs, each needs to connect to an instance of MSSQL, do we take advantage of the speed of the SSDs and install SQL on the host, then the VM connects to that instance, or just keep everything on its own VM.
So we'd have an SQL VM and the other VMs connect to this. All VMs are stored on the data partition.
Any advice is appreciated.
ASKER
The server is already built so we are running with the current config supplied. We're using Hyper-V for virtualisation on this server, if it makes a difference.
So considering our current hardware config, I could create a SQL VM, and run that on the SSDs, allocating 100GB, then create the other VMs, including file server on the RAID10 SAS parition.
So considering our current hardware config, I could create a SQL VM, and run that on the SSDs, allocating 100GB, then create the other VMs, including file server on the RAID10 SAS parition.
I second the idea of not loading VMware on the drives. Most contemporary servers feature an SD card slot; use that to load VMware. Also works well for HyperV servers.
ASKER
What about my proposal for location of VMs:
So considering our current hardware config, I could create a SQL VM, and run that on the SSDs, allocating 100GB, then create the other VMs, including file server on the RAID10 SAS parition.
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Personally i would use 2xSAS (RAID 1) for System (Vmware experts would say that is waste of resources considering that Vmware runs happily from USB but i haven't tested this scenario) ,4xSAS for Data Partition (RAID 10) and SSDs for Ultra Fast VM --> SQL