Greetings,
Hopefully, I am in the right place. If not please direct me.
The only VM OS exposure i have had is "some" to Sun virtualbox installations at a previous employer. I've got the concepts down but am by no means an expert.
I have the opportunity now to construct my first virtual enterprise from start to finish. There (at this point) will be only one client VM server on the host. It is for a small 25-35 user office running SBS 2011 Premium with Exchange. There will/may be more as we grow which is not very likely. I will probably make a test machine here and there but other than that, It will basiclly be a one-VM host.
I am looking for best practices in configuring the actual hardware of the host. I am in the midst of purchasing a tower based server. I don't have the space for racks, and I don't have the $$ or need for a SAN.
I am looking at a server configured with a quad core Xeon, 8-12 GB RAM, and (this is where I am questioning myself). I usually build my (non-VM) servers with a RAID 1 OS pair, and then 3 RAID5 data drives, with a hot/standby spare so that in the event of a failure, the hot-swap can be used for either array.
VMware throws a different set of needs in. What is the best/most practical means of configuring drive array(s) for use with VM? Initially I plane on using the free ESXi version.
Thanks.
P....
