Help with planning an infrastructure

[Phatsta]

Hi everyone!

Since I'm new to this world and still learning, I wanted to get some help in planning a vmware environment. I'm looking to "convert" our office environment. For this, I need to be a 100% sure of how to set up things before I start, of course. These are the prerequisites:

2 physical servers (1 Intel based custom built and 1 HP DL360)

1 NAS (QNAP TS-419U)

Lets just assume the hardware is on the HCL. If it isn't, I'll supplement that if necessary. There's Windows 2003 Server Enterprise on both of them, and these are production servers where one is carrying most roles, and the other is just acting router and TS gateway. I can easily break the latter server free and put it's roles on the other while the changes are being made. I would then install ESXi host on the unused server and convert the other server to a virtual machine with vCenter Converter. That way, I can move the production environment overnight.

The question is; Do I use the NAS as the VM storage? If I do, would I then be able to backup the VM config to the other server and use that for a redundant backup in case the first server goes down?

And for backup; What data do I need to backup in order to be protected if the NAS decides to give up?

I'd really appriciate some pointers! Thanks!

[sflanders]

Hello and welcome to the communities!

The decision to use shared storage (in your case NAS) is typical in environments where multiple ESXi hosts are used such that features like DRS and HA can be leveraged. Another typical use-case is when the performance of multiple drives / RAID are needed. In your case, it appears you have two systems that you care about and I would assume they use local disk today. Based on these assumptions, I would ask why you are interested in converting them to virtual machines? Do you plan to create additional virtual machines in the future? I ask because you may need to consider features like DRS and HA as the environment grows. Assuming you just wish to convert the two physical servers to virtual servers and nothing more, local storage may be sufficient and remove the complexity of the shared storage especially if you think it will fail. In terms of redundancy, you would likely have to mimic what you have physically into virtual machine (i.e. have two VMs like you have two physical servers today) and run them on separate hosts.

Hope this answers your questions.

[AndreTheGiant]

About the storage usage, if you have few VM, you can use as a shared storage.

But in this case you need a different solution for the backup (could be silly make backups only on the same storage).

But if you have more VMs (the number depends by the I/O generated), in this case you must use an enterprise shared storage or local storage (with really good RAID card).

In this case the NAS could be a good solution for backup.

In similar cases I've used the Essential bundle + the Veeam Essential bundle (IMHO this solution is really interesting for the price, but also other solution are available) to implement backup, replication across the two local storage and monitoring.

Andre

[Phatsta]

Thank you guys, very helpful!

Still have a question though. If I choose to use the local drives for VM's and the NAS as backup, exactly what would I need to back up in order to be safe from a disaster (i.e. local drives crash)? A snapshot is not a full backup, correct?

And the following question would of course be how to backup the necessary files, what command to use / script etc?

[AndreTheGiant]

You are right... a snap is not backup... but it can be used to make a full clone.

I suggest to look for a backup solution: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10780