Two ESX Servers and MS Licences.

[cosy]

Hi All,

I got 16 physical servers with Windows 2000/2003 servers some of them are OEM. Now i'm going to virtualize all our servers.

please help me with my questions.

1. Can Dynamic Disk Servers convert to VM?

2. If i got 1 windows Datacentre Edition ( unlimited vm's?) software can i run all my 16 windows servers on both ESX Servers or how we managed the ms licenses?

3. I got 2 physicla sql severs, how we setup these in Virtual Enviroment?

OS: RAID1 (36GB)

Log: RAID1 (146GB)

DATA: RAID10 (256GB)

Temp: RAID 10 ( 50 GB)

Backup : RAID 10 ( 500GB)

i got 2 x ESX Servers and DS3400 SAN (12 Disck x 300GB)

4. if i convert these SQL VM how do we put to SAN for best performance?

5. If i setup TEST ISCSI NAS ( freeNAS) can we move some SAN vms to this ?

6. If we add Exchange, citrix, file server and SQL servers all into single SAN can be any performance issues or what is the best way?

7. What is the best way to backup?

8. Do we need any Vlan setup?

[ctfoster]

2. If i got 1 windows Datacentre Edition ( unlimited vm's?) software can i run all my 16 windows servers on both ESX Servers or how we managed the ms licenses?

There are a lot of points in this post - to take the one about licences you will need a MS DataCenter licence for each processor on each esx server. Therefore if you are running two dual processor boxes you will need four copies of datacenter to completely cover unlimited VM's and the option to vmotion between them. This may still be a good deal however.

[Anders_Gregerse]

With microsoft licenses there are several options, datacenter is a cpu socket based license and gives right to unlimited number of windows running of the licensed cpu'en. Enterprise edition gives you the right to run 4 Windows server on a physical server, and might be a cheaper option for you, depending on the number of physical hosts. Bare in mind that Microsoft have some license limitation when it comes to SQL and Exchange and the use of vmotion.

In ESX you can either use vmdk or rdm's as virtual disks, performance doesn't differ much and it's really more about ease of management. Sql can run in a virtual environment, but don't expect that it will run as well as physical hardware (1 vcpu doesn't perform as well as 1 quadcore pcpu) and you should do some testing before taking the step. Exchange 2003 and below works fine on ESX, with 2007 I would recommend to test performance too (very memory hungy).

Sizing disks for SQL do as you do in the physical world. Think of the virtualization as a way of being hardware independed.

If it two fast servers you can mix citrix, sql and exchange, but remember virtualization isn't magic, if you have a physical server that is 90% loaded, it doesn't get better when virtualized.

Iscsi works fine, but again, test performance. A freenas and an enterprise level iscsi solution doesn't perform equally good.

Keep doing backup as you do now (except don't attach a tapedrive to a ESX host, it defies the purpose of virtualization). We outsourced our backup, best move in a long time.

Vlan depends on how your network is set up, but basics is do as in a physical world. It's just easier and cheaper to use vlan if you need more that a few networks.

[Subatomic]

On point two. This documents licensing. It's dated 2006.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-4a6d-aed9-f2c1f8f23e14/virtualization_whi...

[khughes]

1. Can Dynamic Disk Servers convert to VM?

Ok lets start from the begging. Dynamic Disk servers can cause some problems during the P2V process, but sometimes they are fine. The only problem server we had during our conversion was an extremely old Win2k box with software RAID1. Since it was such an old box and we didn't use many of the programs running it, we just rebuilt it and haven't looked back since. If a hot clone doesn't work, try a cold clone. If neither work you might need to build a fresh server and restore at worst case.

3. I got 2 physicla sql severs, how we setup these in Virtual Enviroment?

OS: RAID1 (36GB)

Log: RAID1 (146GB)

DATA: RAID10 (256GB)

Temp: RAID 10 ( 50 GB)

Backup : RAID 10 ( 500GB)

When you do the p2v, you will have the option to see all the disks and resize them if you would like. On a lot of our servers, we had the OS drive sitting with 36GB and using maybe... 8-12GB which means we were able to cut down some space by shrinking those drives smaller. You can expand volumes later on down the road by increasing the vmdk file, just a fyi. If you are happy with the size of those drives that you have now, then by all means keep them the same size if you have the space. When doing a p2v on server with multiple logical drives, I would create a blank txt file on the root of each drive with the drive letter as the name, sometimes the p2v doesn't keep the same drive lettering order, this will help you remember what drives are what. As for the RAID levels don't need to worry about any of that because its all on the SAN storage.

i got 2 x ESX Servers and DS3400 SAN (12 Disck x 300GB)

4. if i convert these SQL VM how do we put to SAN for best performance?

When building out your SAN this is your backbone of the network. Build it out with the RAID level that you feel comfertable with. Take in consideration your enviroment, speed, space, reduntancy. We have about 3TB of storage space on our main SAN (FC). We broke it apart into 2 LUNs both RAID5 with a hot spare. If you have the space available and want a RAID10 by all means but this is basically set in stone once you create it and start moving your servers onto it. Also when creating your LUNs on ESX, make sure your block sizes are correct. If you are going to use a 500GB vmdk file you might want a 2MB (512GB vmdk file max) block, maybe even a 4MB block which would give you up 1TB vmdk file max. All considerations to consider when building out your SAN.

5. If i setup TEST ISCSI NAS ( freeNAS) can we move some SAN vms to this ?

If you have some low end boxes and don't want to waste SAN space it could be a possibility

6. If we add Exchange, citrix, file server and SQL servers all into single SAN can be any performance issues or what is the best way?

We run 4 Citrix servers, 2 SQL databases and a heavy/large pervasive database along with file server, exchange, etc... all on our 2 RAID5 LUNs without any performance hit so far. If you have a nice SAN everything should run smoothly. I think your configuration of your VMs might be more of an impact than your SAN housing all of your servers. Review the differences in performance from 1vCPU to 2vCPUs. All of our physical servers before conversion ran on duel physical CPUs, the only servers in our VM enviroment now that run 2 vCPUs are our Citrix servers since they can utiliize the multiple processors effectively.

7. What is the best way to backup?

This is always a big discussion, there is no global set "best backup solution" it is different from person to person and the configuration of the network. There is a current thread going on right now on this subject and if you searched you could fun 100's more. Texiwill created a nice document comparing almost all the backup solutions out there and ranked them. Personally I use esXpress to cover our backups, has a very clean way about it IMO. Have been using it since day one of our conversion, backs up well, and so far during our mini DR runs, it restores like a charm. Not to mention the awesome customer support they give but thats enough of my plug on them. Read the comparison document and decide for yourself, talk with the different companies and find one that fits YOUR enviroment, not someone elses.

Texiwill's Document -

Current backup method thread - http://communities.vmware.com/message/966393

8. Do we need any Vlan setup?

This is something that you will need to decide. Do you have a DMZ? We wanted to keep the DMZ and Production networks phsyically separate so we have dedicated NICs that run to our DMZ switch, but you can trunk it or do other options.

Hope some of this information was helpful

• Kyle

[cosy]

HI All,

Thank you so much Kyle and also other guys. Still not Quite Understand about SAN RAID setup and Where we put these VM's VMDK files

As i said I got 2 SQL Servers. So to get best performance i need to add SQL OS on RAID1 , LOGS on RAID1 and DATA on RAID 5/10 on physical Server.

But how do we RAID SAN ? or what is the best way to do that?

[amarnathreddy19]

Hi,

I would suggest you to take backup of all servers

from backup copies create vm's and test it in lab. if it goes fine then you can migrate all the servers.

Amar

[khughes]

HI All,

Thank you so much Kyle and also other guys. Still not Quite Understand about SAN RAID setup and Where we put these VM's VMDK files

As i said I got 2 SQL Servers. So to get best performance i need to add SQL OS on RAID1 , LOGS on RAID1 and DATA on RAID 5/10 on physical Server.

But how do we RAID SAN ? or what is the best way to do that?

Hey Cosy, we run a IBM DS3400 SAN here. There are a few variables that change things but are you using the DS3400 now or is it blank waiting for the VM conversion? There is the SAN utility that you use to create the Logical drives on the SAN, basically where you carve up the SAN space to dedicate it to your servers. You would use that tool to create your Logical drives for your ESX hosts to connect to.

What you have to kinda let go from the physical servers to the virtual server thinking perspective is that you no longer use RAID levels for your servers within VMware. Your drives inside your VMs are just files now (vmdk files). There is no RAID there. You have a global RAID which is configured when you use your IBM utility to carve up the SAN. So you have 12 x 300GB drives on your DS3400, lets say you want to create two LUNs which ESX will use to store your VMs on.

For example purposes,LUN1 = 6 x 300GB and LUN2 = 6 x 300GB for the other, and each of those logical drives you would make it so they are RAID5. There is your RAID settings for ALL the VMs that sit on a LUN.

For your SQL server, you put it on LUN1, that means there is a vmdk file for your OS, another vmdk file for your LOGs, another vmdk file for your Data and if you wanted another vmdk file for your backup data. That is a total of four .VMDK files, just think of them as a large document that contains all the information that would be on that logical hard drive. There is no RAID on any of those vmdk files because the RAID sits on the SAN and how you configured LUN1 which is a RAID5 logical drive.

Hopefully that clarifies it a little bit, if I'm doing a poor job of explaining it just let me know I'll try and re-word it.

• Kyle

[cosy]

HI,

Thanks, I got it. But if we create 3 Luns similler to Physical Server will that make any performace? or best with 2-3 luns with raid 10?

[khughes]

If it was me in your shoes, I wouldn't create luns to match a single server, its more of a headache to manage. I would create 2 LUNs on your SAN and test performance. Obviously a RAID10 is most likely going to be faster than a RAID5, but you also need to take into consideration how many VMs you have to convert and how much space you're going to get out of RAID5 or RAID10. Assuming you went with RAID10, that basically gives you 1.5TB of usable space (12/2 = Mirror, take another one away for the hot-spare, leaves you with 5 x 300GB disks = 1.5TB) or you go with a couple RAID5 which would give you a bit more usable disk space. These are all considerations you'll need to take into consideration. Personally we run a couple SQL databases, nothing too huge but they are both on RAID5 LUNs along with pervasive databases and I haven't seen a performance hit yet.

In the end it comes down to what you feel comfertable with, but if you're that freaked out to move this SQL server, maybe it shouldn't be a canidate for virtualization. Again I don't know how big it is or what type of workload it has, or how many VMs you're planning on moving onto your DS3400, so my opinion is based off of a lot of blanks that I'm filling in with assumptions of your network along with my experiances p2v'n servers. When we first started migrating servers, my boss was very worried about one of our SQL databases to the point where he wouldn't let us p2v it. Finally 3 months after our conversion, he allowed us to p2v it and we haven't looked back since and he's happy with the move. All on your comfert level

• Kyle

[cosy]

Hi Kyle

Thanks again, My Accounts DB's are 45GB and 30GB but my web server DB is 180GB with lots of product images. I got 13 Physical severs and 3-4 Vmware server vm's.

I don't know we can run fax server on vm?

I just try image the Dynamic disk server using symantec server recovery but i couldn't boot.

[ctfoster]

I don't know we can run fax server on vm?

If you are planning to run the fax server with a dedicated card - like a Brooktrout, then the answer is no.

[cosy]

HI,

No just WinFax attached to 2 serial FAX Modems?

WIth this link state we can get best performance through the 64bit VM

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/SQLServerWorkloads.pdf

So how do we select hardware or software for this?

[SonyRaymond]

I am new to Microsoft license issue and want to know if a server running Intel Q9600 Quad processor,

then how many processors are counted in the data-center license?

Thanks,

Raymond

[Anders_Gregerse]

Microsoft count's sockets as vmware when we are talking about Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter Edition, so it doesn't matter how many cores you have.