physical to virtual

[sansond]

Hey Guys,

I need some help. I have a small customer that has a server that is running out of disk space. My thought is to virtualize there setup to make it more flexible. I would like some opinions and suggestions if you have the time.

Current setup is as follows:

1. Dell Server with Windows 2003 server.

2. Raid1 2 x 18 gb hard drives. Has the os installed on it.

3. Raid 5 3 x 36 gb hard drives. Has data and Sql Server 2000.

Currently the whole system is running out of space. The system partition is getting full and the data partition is almost full as well. When the person sized it they didn't account for the growth at all. The system is used for a small ERP system and has about 12 client pc running transactions throughout the day.

My propsal is to convert this to a vm and put in on some new hardware. This would minimize the downtime to convert and give them more flexibility and allow me to move the vm to another server for maintenance if needed.

The part I am not sure about is if I p2v the current machine it is going to give me the current disk sizes and still won't allow for growth. Am I correct with this. Is there a way to increase the vm file size.

The new hardware I was thinking about would be the same setup as above only with larger hard drives and probably 4 drives for the raid 5 instead of 3, more ram and newer processors. What would be the best approach for the install. Should I put the esx server on the raid 1 and then put the vm on the raid 5. Or would that buy me anything in performance. Should I just build a raid 5 setup and put everything on that. Or if I am way off base please tell me and give me the best solution. Also of course money is always a conern. I am going to try to sell them on esx instead of vmware server but if not can I get this to work with vmware server.

Thanks for everyone who shares their knowledge. I am a newbie when it comes to esx and vmware server so all the help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Devin

[Troy_Clavell]

using VMConverter will allow you to change the size of the drives. When you convert it to a virtual machine make sure you change the size of the disk.

http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv302.html

[khughes]

You are correct, during the p2v process you can specify larger or smaller or the exact same drive size (as long as you have room for it on your storage of course).

My one question is, are you planning to just p2v 1 server and run it off of ESX? Don't get me wrong virtualization is the best thing since sliced bread, but seems awefuly expensive to upgrade to newer more powerful machines with more ram (run you between 5-10k) and then purchase ESX which isn't that cheap all to just run this server virtualized. On top of that a lot of the downtime savings you'll get with ESX is based off of HA/DRS etc.

But hey if you have the money to spend on that type of project thats awesome for you, I wish I was in your shoes

[Rodos]

If you are planning on moving the VM to another server for maintenance you are going to have to shut it down and copy the VMDK files, which can take a while for larger disks. If you want to do this more easily you will want two hosts and some shared storage with VC.

Mapping out your disk storage will be a "depends". One larger RAID5 set partitioned up is probably going to be easiest. You don't really need high performance for the install of ESX itself and it does not take up much room. However you may require certain performance for the app, such as logs for SQL.

As mention if this is only for a single host it might be better to update the physical server. But hopefully your strategy is that this is the first step in a larger migration of other systems as well and the development of a virtual infrastructure for the site.

[MrBiscuit]

Disclaimer: I'm all about Virtualisation.

If they only have one server, and will continue to only have one server, ESX is not necessarily going to save you money or effort. Getting a replacement physical and converting across using something like Acronis True Image and it's neato driver injection recovery process may be easier and more cost effective if you already have the tools.

As for your virtualising quetsion; when diskspace is at a premium in a small installation I would suggest that you just raid 5 across your drive bays and do a default install from the ESX disks - especially if you are new to ESX - the less complications you have the better. I'm not saying that having two raid arrays is complicated but it is an extra step and you never know when a simple extra step will trip you up

You can certainly make that work on Vmware Server, but just remember that it doesn't use resources as efficiently as ESX. Also, don't skimp on the raid controller.

[sansond]

Thanks for the information Mr. B.

I don't know much about Acronis but it sounds like an interesting product. It may be the way to go since it looks like I could turn it into a virtual machine at anytime with their product.

Thanks,

-Devin

[MrBiscuit]

The Acronis toolset also has the bonus of being directly importable into Vmware converter, which is often a popular DR-lite solution.

[Hairyman]

Dumb question, you are running SQL Server backups to keep the size of your log files to a minimum? I recently had to do this on a server i happen to be on looking for a file and noticed that it had 10MB of free space on a partition size of 30GB. I did a backup and a database shrink and got it back to 28GB free space.

[sansond]

Yes we are running a maintenance plan every night that does this. Thanks for the reminder though.

[sansond]

Hey folks,

Thanks for all the replies with some great informatoin. I am also needing a little assistance with the vmware converter. I keep getting an error message saying it unable to connect to vmware converter agent on local machine. Any ideas? I am trying to test this on a box with Windows Server 2003 and it is a PDC.

Thanks!

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hi Devin, is this the only domain controller that you have? If not, then it's a bad idea to use vmware converter to do a live clone of the server. If you have access to ESX Enterprise then you can download Enterprise converter which will allow you to do a cold clone of the DC. Otherwise you could try this free tool which will be able to do a cold clone http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html or you may want to consider installing a new Windows 2003 install in a VM and then running dcpromo.

[MrBiscuit]

HI Sansond.

Sounds like a classic case of not having the machine running converter, the target, and the source all on the same subnet or with the necessary ports open between subnets. If your target is virtual centre, then that and the ESX servers also need to be available to both the source and the machine running converter.

Of course, if you're running converter on the source machine, the best thing to do is to re-IP it to the VC / ESX subnet and bring it in that way. Elsewise you can check through the logs for the exact link which is missing and fix it up. I know there is a document that goes through all of this, but basically you need 2-way connection between all the players.

Edit: Sorry, missed that you said it was a Domain Controller - Using a P2V'd DC is not recommended, but P2Ving for DR or emergencies is a reasonable precaution. You are better off creating a new VM, dcpromoing and bringing across the roles.