Resource requirements for Win Server 2008

[bushtor]

Hi,

I have two hosts, both dual cpu quad core with 8Gb RAM each running ESX3.5i

I plan to have two Win 2008 Std domain controllers on each host (Host-1: Domain-A main and domain-B secondary DC, Host-2: Domain-B primary and domain-A secondary DC).

The number of users are limited, around 50 with most office applications, needing file sharing and printing. How much virtual machine memory and CPU should I give each of these domain controllers..? I hope a lot of you have experience with this and it would be nice to hit somewhere near the target when I set up virtual domain controllers for the first time

As of disk resources, I usually set up separate shares for user profiles, home folders and common resources. Consequently, Main DC for Domain-A (in Host-1) and the Secondary DC for Domain-A (in Host-2) need access to the same of these three disk 'shares'. How do I do this in VMWare?

In each virtual machine setting, under SCSI controller 0, should I select option '3' below of what would the correct config be in this scenario?

SCSI bus sharing:

1 No sharing

2 Virtual - between virtual machines on the same server

3 Physical - between virtual machines on any server

Thanks for comments on this

regards

Tor

[AndreTheGiant]

How much virtual machine memory and CPU should I give each of these domain controllers..?

For small environment like yours you can follow Microsoft requirements:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/system-requirements.aspx

I suggest 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM.

As of disk resources, I usually set up separate shares for user profiles, home folders and common resources. Consequently, Main DC for Domain-A (in Host-1) and the Secondary DC for Domain-A (in Host-2) need access to the same of these three disk 'shares'. How do I do this in VMWare?

You can use Windows sharing (in this case you have 1 disk that export a share to the second VM).

Or Microsoft DFS + replica (in this case you have 2 sincronized disks).

Or Microsoft Failover cluster to share a physical disk, but you will need a shared storage AND you must not use MSCS on DC.

Andre

[AntonVZhbankov]

>I suggest 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM.

Even 1GB is more than enough for such environment.

---

VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AndreTheGiant]

Even 1GB is more than enough for such environment.

Yes, but the extra vRAM could be useful for fileserver part (for file caching purpose).

Andre

[AntonVZhbankov]

Not sure about combining DC and FS roles on same server. If Windows license allows, it would be better to split file servers and DC's to different VMs.

---

VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru