Best options for my setup...

[StressedOut]

I'm just getting to the final testing phase of a server re-vamp, looking for advice on best VM setup options...

The end result on a 20 user setup is this...

2008r2 64bit running as domain controller, DNS, DHCP, AD

2008r2 64bit running as user file and printer sharing

2008r2 64bit running remote desktop services sharing to 10 users

2008r2 64bit running sql server 2008r2

XP legacy VM for our staff time-keeping setup (will be removed sometime soon as funds permit)

XP VM running a pre-processor for a printing press (isolated and cannot be removed)

Now, if i recall correctly (i'm at home and can't check) the server hardware is a Dell T410 with dual quad-core processors and 32gb ram with 8 x 1tb disks running as two raid10 data stores.

The VM running desktop services was already running and i think has two VCPU and 12gb ram allocated, the rest of the 2008 VM's are all still running default settings of 4gb ram and 1 VCPU, these are not in production yet, Domain control and sql services is still being provided by an old 2003sbs VM that will be killed off soon.

Is there a recommended setup i should look at or just go with defaults and see what happens?

I have no reservations, share tweaks etc, all defaults.

Any advice welcome and appreciated

Thanks

Here's a picture of the setup

The top VM was just restarted hence the maxed our ram usage.

The Blue shaded vm's are in production with users on, all others are idle.

[theaaronstrong]

What's installed in your RDS setup and what's running on the database? Do you have hyper-threading turned on?

Best advice I can give is don't go over your vCPU count with RDS and database running on same host.

[StressedOut]

Hi

RDS is running desktops for the users so our office front-end app, a word processor like Libre-Office, email client like thunderBird, Chrome, maybe one or more other small apps. No video, audio etc.

The sql is only used for storage/retrieval of our invoicing and stock control app, no external connections etc, Its lightly used i guess but quite large.

Currently our sql server is on the old 2003sbs VM with 4xVCPU and 3gb ram and the processor sees pretty much nothing - the new 2008r2 server under test has 1xVCPU and currently the default 4gb of ram.

When the screenshot was taken, usage was fairly low to average i'd say. There will be a big peak on the database when the EOD is run after the business closes each night plus a massive surge overnight when Veeam does the snapshots and backups.

Overall I think my multi-server setup is massively overkill but it seems good to have different tasks compartmentalised like this.