ESXi Install/Config Best Practices

[Cbaur88]

Hi all, first and foremost I am VMware noob, my appologies. I have been testing Esxi 4 in-house for the past few months. Without getting into much detail I'd like to adopt Esxi four DR solution. We are a small company with a larger parent company who can provide space for equipment and employee's should a DR strike.

I would like to buy one adaquite sever to deploy three virtual servers which would be W2k3 or W2k8. One would be a File/Print server, another a Exchange 2007 server, and the last would be a terminal server. Looking for a guideline or a best practice document that talks about memory allocation/recommendations, hardware practices, partitioning practices, etc.... For example would I want to go w/ a Raid 5 configuration vs. a Raid 1 or a Raid 1+0. When installing w2k3 would I want to created a c:\ and d:\ partition....Etc....

If any of you have recommendations or some guidlines that you can share with me, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance to all!!

[a_p_]

Without knowing how much the servers are going to be utilized, that's not easy to answer. Can you provide some information on your current environment and how much it is utilized (CPU, disk sizes, I/Os) now. How much disk space do you need in the future?

What are your plans to handle DR?

André

[Cbaur88]

{quote:title=a.p. wrote:}{quote}Without knowing how much the servers are going to be utilized, that's not easy to answer. Can you provide some information on your current environment and how much it is utilized (CPU, disk sizes, I/Os) now. How much disk space do you need in the future? What are your plans to handle DR? André

Thaks Andre for the reply. We are a smaller company about 25 - 30 employee's. This project is strickly for DR purposes and these servers would not be used unless a DR strikes. Because we are small we are trying to keep the costs of this madatory DR plan down to the bare bone minimum. Our Exchange box is a dual processor intel xeon with a Mirror array for the o/s and transaction logs. A Raid 5 array for the DB store. The DB store is approx 35GB. Our file/print server is also a RAID 5 with about 60 - 70GB of company data. Was wondering if there was a guildine out there someone could share or a best practice. For example I read in another forum that rougly 2GB per virtual server was good. Does that mean I should equip my server with 6GB of ram because I am building 3 virtual servers? Thanks for your help!

{quote:title=}{quote}

[golddiggie]

Are you looking to have this at the same physical location as the existing servers, or a secondary site? If secondary, then there's going to be a lot more involved than just getting a server to be the ESX host. You'll need network storage that can be replicated across both locations, a good pipe between both locations, software licenses to cover all the components, etc... Realistically, most people don't go physical primary servers to virtual DR servers (at least not that I've seen). It's more common to have critical VM's at the primary location designated for DR to the secondary location through the DR plans.

I would recommend figuring out which servers are deemed "critical" (if that's not already what you've posted) including DC's, and others. Look at the VMware SRM (vCenter Site Recovery Manager) documentation to get some better ideas of what's involved. I would also recommend reaching out to a VMware Premier partner in your area to get some assistance in designing the correct solution. Include networking, storage, ESX/ESXi host licenes, vCenter licenses (you'll need it) and such. It would also be a good idea to virtualize the servers you have, in order to manage everything from within vCenter. So, you're looking at two ESX/ESXi host servers, licenses for both, storage at both physical locations, and the actual licenses/software to allow for the failover to happen correctly. Depending on the pipe between locations (and it's stability) you could opt to try using HA or FT initially. You'll still need to have the SAN's in both locations in sync. If you don't already have some good UPS run time, you'll need to ensure you have that on key items. Things like the storage solution, DC's at both locations, LAN switch that you're connected into, the gateway/router to get connect to the secondary location too. That way when you do have a power failure, there's enough time to sync the final data between the two locations before faulting over to the secondary.

Like I said, there's a lot to it... VMware partners do this type of thing a lot (especially the better ranked ones for the regions) so they'll be able to help you out with specifics...

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[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

If it is strictly meant for DR use, I assume high performance is not what you need in first place.

So I would go for a server with 1 QuadCore CPU 2.5GHz or more, at least 8GB RAM, 2x300GB SAS HDD's as RAID1, make sure you have a RAID controller with battery buffered write cache (otherwise you will not be very happy). Make sure the server and components are on the VMware HCL

The servers will probably run with 2GB RAM each, however ESXi will also need some RAM.

Configure the VM's as you would do with physical HW.

For Windows 2003 you may want to do partition alignment.

André

EDIT: Please use only 1 vCPU per VM.

[golddiggie]

As a "lean" system that works... I do tend to 'over engineer' solutions so that they could almost take a nuclear blast and survive...

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[Cbaur88]

If it is strikly meant for DR use, I assume high performance is not what you need in first place.

So I would go for a server with 1 QuadCore CPU 2.5GHz or more, at least 8GB RAM, 2x300GB SAS HDD's as RAID1, make sure you have a RAID conrtoller with battery buffered cache (otherwise you will not be very happy). Make sure the server and components are on the VMware HCL

The servers will probably run with 2GB RAM each, however ESXi will also need some RAM.

Configure the VM's as you would do with physical HW.

For Windows 2003 you may want to do partition alignment.

André

EDIT: Please use only 1 vCPU per VM.

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Andre, thanks SO much that's exactly what I was looking for. Your right performance isn't an issue, and because we are going bare bones and our company isn't mission critical we can allow for some down time to rebuild. Our data is stored offsite and small enough for the most part to download from the web or have sent directly to us overnight at our secondary location.

One quick question for you if you don't mind. Would you recommend a dual processor server or would I be ok with a single processor server? Thanks again so much!

[Cbaur88]

As a "lean" system that works... I do tend to 'over engineer' solutions so that they could almost take a nuclear blast and survive...

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</div>

LOL, thanks Golddiggie, I wish I had to budget to build it out like that but we are really really pinching pennies here. Our data isn't that large and our DR plan allow for down time to rebuild so I am cutting corners left and right. thanks for your input!!!

[a_p_]

Glad I could help.

I guess one Qaud-Core CPU will do by far.

André

[golddiggie]

If you go with a server using the 5500 or 5600 series Xeon's you'll be ok with a single, but you'll probably never go beyond moderate load with duals.

Look at the Dell R710 servers as a host. Used three of those at one job, easily handled a range of VM's (29 total) without even breaking a sweat...

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[Cbaur88]

Thanks guys you really have been a great help. Take care to you both!!!!!

[golddiggie]

Using the E5520 processors (dual) is a good balance of economics with power... For the difference in cost beween one E5520 and one E5540, you can almost add a second E5520 (~$100 price difference). In my opinion, you'd be better off with two E5520's than one E5540. I fully configured a samle host server, with 12GB of RAM (was only $200 more over 8GB, and gives a bit more room)... Using the suggested (by Andre) for storage, and it comes out to about $4200 for the host server.

I attached it in case you want to review...

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[Cbaur88]

Thanks so much golddiggie, this really a huge help and guildline. Can't thank you enough! I've got a budge of about 5,000 grand for a server so if I can swing it I'll prob go dual........Thanks again!

[golddiggie]

Forgot the rails in the bundle... If you're going to rack mount it, then add those (attached the updated pdf)... As configured, you'd be under budget for the hardware. Then it's a matter of getting the software all lined up. Depending on how you're going to handle the DR aspect, that could get tricky...

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