Hardware for Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
Fournier@discussions.microsoft.com Henri Fournier
hardware recommendations, so hopefully someone here can shed some light.
I'm looking at replacing a few old whitebox PC (P3 dual proc and p4) being
used as servers with one machine running VMs. The machines are old and tired
and draw a lot of power. I'd like consolidate, get better performance and
save energy. However, the budget is pretty tight, so I'm not looking for the
ideal server. I need something I can afford that'll get the job done
(software is through partner program, so I'm only concerned about hardware
costs). I'm running a SOHO office, so the servers are not under a heavy load.
I'd like to setup the following VMs:
* SBS 2008 (upgrading from SBS 2003)
* WS2008 Std with SQL Server 2008
* WS 2008 Web Edition
* W7 (for remote access through SBS 2008 RWW)
I was looking at the new Dell PowerEdge T110 (bottom end), which comes with
a quad-core Xeon processor and 8 GB of RAM. I thought I could assign a core
to each VM (can you do this?), 1 GB to the host, 1 Gb to the Web and 2 GB to
each of the others. Let me know if I'm already out-to-lunch.
When it comes to drives, I'm kinda lost. Should I have 1 drive per VM? If
so, which VM should share with the host? Am I OK with onboard SATA controller
(no RAID) or should I go with RAID 0? Something else? Would prefer SATA over
SCSI due to price, unless it's the wrong way to go.
As for NICs, how many do I need? 1 for the host and 1 for the VMs, or 1 for
each of the VMs? Can they be any GB NIC, or do they need to be special
virtualization-ready NICs?
Anything else I should know/do?
Thanks.
Charlie Russel - MVP
useable, even in a small SOHO office. For the others, you can probably get
away with 2GB each, though it's pretty tight if you're actually doing
anything with the SQL Server box. 12 GB would be tight, but acceptable, and
16 GB would be a better choice. If you do go with 12, make sure you have an
option to increase beyond that if you don't want to be boxed in.
I'd give SBS it's own physical NIC, plus one for management, and one or two
for sharing with other VMs.
For a smallish office like this, you're probably all right with a SATA RAID
(though SAS is always a better choice). But not ever RAID0 - you not only
don't have redundancy, you've actually increased your risk of failure. But a
decent PERC card in there, and a RAID 10 or 0+1 with 4 disks should give you
acceptable throughput.
One of the biggest problems with virtualizing workloads is providing
adequate I/O to handle the load. It's easy to calculate what you need for
processor or RAM, since those translate directly from what you're replacing.
But keep in mind that you're now putting all the I/O load from all your VMs
onto your disk and network subsystems and if you don't provide a good base
here the entire workload will grind to a halt.
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel
"Henri Fournier" <Henri Four...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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Henri Fournier
which is usually not enough, so I see where your 6 comes in. I didn't realize
how much higher the req. are over sbs 2003 (min 512 MB - rec 1 GB).
Wow! Following all your recommendations just drove the price of the box up
by a factor of 3. Yikes. Not the bargain solution I was hoping for.
Thanks for the info.
Henri
> .
>
Charlie Russel - MVP
price. I know I built one with 16 GB, a serious RAID card, 4x500 GB
Enterprise SATA drives, a pair of backup USB drives, and 3 NICs for roughly
$3k CAD, so you should be able to do it for under $2500 USD. Especially now
that Core i7 is out and supports 12 GB without any problem or expensive 4GB
DIMMs. (I had to build mine with 4GB DIMMs because it was pre-i7.)
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel
"Henri Fournier" <HenriF...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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Henri Fournier
Are you taking about your HP ML350 G5 on your blog? Now that you've had it
for a while and i7 is out, what would you do differently? You mentioned the
G6...
I'm guessing you're not running Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V on that box,
since it hasn't been available for that long. So what's your software setup,
if you don't mind? Thanks.
PS: Mine would be $ CAD too.
Henri
> .
>
Charlie Russel - MVP
have a G6, but there's no money in the budget for such. Certainly if I were
buying a box today, however, and had a reasonable budget, the ML350G6 would
be my preference. (And yes, the ML350G5 is running Server R2. )
Sometimes, however, we have to make do with rather less than what we'd like
to choose. I do a lot of work with our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate
and built a server for them on a very limited budget. We used a consumer
motherboard that supported 4x4GB DDR2 and a quad-core CPU, and added a 3Ware
RAID card with battery backup and then configured the 4 drives as RAID 0+1.
The total for the box, including USB backup drives was ~$3k CAD.
I also built an i7 box for my own use writing the Introducing Windows Server
2008 R2 book. I had zero budget and needed a hyper-v capable box that could
support live migration. And I had less than a week to get it up and running
and doing failovers so I could write that chapter. I used a consumer i7
board, a 920 processor, 6x2GB of DDR3, and a bunch of hard drives I had
lying around. Recycled an old case, used a spare power supply that I got in
one or another NCIX promo, and plugged in the cheapest PCI-e video card I
could buy. The total came to less than $1k CAD. With PST/GST. I certainly
wouldn't recommend it for production work, but it did the job and is just
fine as a test bed environment.
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel
"Henri Fournier" <HenriF...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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SteveB
Charlie do you have the specific brand & model of those 2 consumer
motherboards you mention?
"Charlie Russel - MVP" <Cha...@mvKILLALLSPAMMERSps.org> wrote in message
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Charlie Russel - MVP
Both were Asus motherboards. A P5Q Pro and a P6T SE, I believe. Decent
boards, not by any means the top of the Asus line. And if I were building a
dual-proc system, I wouldn't be using an Asus. But in both cases, boards
that supported 4GB DIMMs, even though I didn't populate the i7 box with
them. (WAY too expensive at the time.)
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel
"SteveB" <news...@public.lan> wrote in message
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Henri Fournier
FYI, Dell claims their box out performs the HP for less money:
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/support/Tower_SBS_performance_reporttoDell_10-27-08.pdf
> .
>
Charlie Russel - MVP
servers and HP servers. There's no question in my mind which is a better
built machine and which I would prefer to have, other factors being equal.
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel
"Henri Fournier" <HenriF...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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