Windows DFS-R

[stefarr]

Hi all, at the moment i have 2 physical windows file servers using DFS-R i would like to move to ESX5 host's

Budget is limited (very limited) but i have managed to get ESX licence with VSA for 3 hosts, i have purchased the first new ESX Host server and i planned to put as much local storage in all 3 new servers as possible, i then planned to move the existing windows file servers to the virtual hosts one at a time.

To me it sound's simple but i'm new to this, anyone have any thoughts?

thanks

[jrmunday]

From what I can make out you are going to be deploying a small VMWare environment (3x hosts) and then virtualise your 2x physical DFS-R servers using VMware converter - Is this correct?

I would suggest planning your infrastructure (Hosts, networks, storage, etc.), testing IO performance on your storage (and obviously documenting everything for your own requirements). Perhaps you could post this planning information for the community to review?

[hullt]

Just a suggestion, build 2 new virtual server utilizing server 2012 which introduces many new enhancements in DFS and replicate the data to them. After you are in-sync just turn off the other 2. This will allow you test and avoid any P2V issues.

[stefarr]

Hi everyone, i had thought of the new virtual server on 2012, seems to be the best way forward, any thoughts on the storage, im paying for the VSA (or getting it as part of my licence) but it seems to me if i have 2 virtual 2012 dfs-r servers on different host's that replicate between each other then VSA would not need to be used in this scenario.

any thoughts?