VMWARE have I got a business case!

Discussion in 'Virtual and Cloud Computing' started by garyb, Jun 17, 2008.

  1. garyb

    garyb Byte Poster

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    Hi,
    I am currently running 3 servers for our external clients in a data center: 1 x SQL server on LAN side of firewall, 1 x IIS server on DMZ side & 1 x MySQL/PHP server for a standalone wqeb app on DMZ.

    The SQL server, although powerful is out of warranty and Dell cannot renew as its 5 years old leaving us exposed should it have problems.. This means I will need to get a new PowerEdge server to replace the SQL box, which I think gives me the perfect opportunity to use VMWARE in realtime providing I can raise a good business case for it..

    First things first, presumably I can actually have these 3 websites with 3 different subnets/IPs but how would I ensure they are cabled to the DMZ and not the LAN port of the firewall if I only have 1 NIC on the server? Is there a risk here of the LAN & DMZ traffic being available to each other?

    My intention would be to use the old server [current SQL] as a failover box for the VM box as we have DoubleTake also, are there any other issues I should think of or advice I could use to make a business case?

    I have the choice of 2008 server from dell so if anyone thinks Windows 2008 Hyper-V would suffiice?

    regards

    G
     
    WIP: MCSA 2003
  2. Kitkatninja
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    To be honest, even though I'm using Hyper-v... it is still in the RC stages and not a "rtm" or finished product yet. You will also need more than one NIC, from what I've been playing around from within my setup.

    You may want to see here, here and here for further info.

    -Ken
     
    Certifications: MSc, PGDip, PGCert, BSc, HNC, LCGI, MBCS CITP, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCE, A+, N+, S+, Server+
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  3. garyb

    garyb Byte Poster

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    Hi Ken, thanx for the links perhaps I should spend a couple of days on a test server before proceeding with the purchase to ensure it covers our needs. Adding another NIC isnt a problem, but making sure the LAN & DMZ servers remain apart is critical!

    I will do the study, but do you kow if the Hyper-V server were to die, could I simpy install the images to another server and have instant uptime? With DoubleTake it copies files at byte level as thye occur so I guess I would have almost a mirror on another server in the datacenter?

    Thanx again?

    gary
     
    WIP: MCSA 2003
  4. chrisgatguis

    chrisgatguis New Member

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    presume your talking ESX / GSX here - the way we set it up here is you have your LAN switch plugging into one network card and then you DMZ switch plugged into another network card on your physical ESX server..

    (not sure of the specifics of the HW your using - we use IBM stuff)

    but essentially, with two NICs one going to each switch you then set up two 'virtual switches' within ESX. when you create your VM's and add a NIC to the config you can specify which virtual network you want to connect it to.

    hope this helps
     
  5. simongrahamuk
    Honorary Member

    simongrahamuk Hmmmmmmm?

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    Yes you can simply move the VM's over to another Hyper-V server, or even donwgrade them so that they will run on Virtual server 2005.

    As for fault tollerance at the minute Hyper-V hasn't got an equivallent of vmwares v-motion that will swith the servers over automatically (with users still connected). What it has got though if you set up clustering is something which will down the VM and restart it on another server automatically, but you would loose connections whilst it reboots.
     
  6. garyb

    garyb Byte Poster

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    Hmm, that could be an issue, we will only have 1 2008 Server, all others in datacenter failiover scenario are 2003..

    Maybe I am looking at the wrong solution here. With our current scenario we have 2 servers [
    IIS & SQL] in a datcenter. If I buy the new PE from Dell I could then make this the failover server using DoubleTake for both IIS & SQL. In the event of failure the new server would take over IP and DNS name of machine that dies giving me time to repair.

    Am I missing something, theres no real benefit for me going the virtual route with the above setup is there?

    Thanx again
     
    WIP: MCSA 2003
  7. simongrahamuk
    Honorary Member

    simongrahamuk Hmmmmmmm?

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    Virtual Server 2005 runs on Windows Server 2003. 8)
     
  8. garyb

    garyb Byte Poster

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    Blimey, just got round to getting this demo environment setup. Can I dupolicate a guest OS to stop me having to run the install over and over? For example i want 3 server 2003 machines, can I simply install 1 then duplicate 2 others obviously changing the network settings?

    Thanx

    G
     
    WIP: MCSA 2003
  9. Luddym

    Luddym Megabyte Poster

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    What are you using in the end?... VM or Server 2008?

    In VM, you can easily install a copy of Server 2003 and then create a template of it. From this template you can keep making clones from it long into the future as well.

    (Don't know Hyper-V well enough to know how easy it is to clone.)
     
    Certifications: VCP,A+, N+, MCSA, MCSE
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  10. garyb

    garyb Byte Poster

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    Hi,
    Went for VM server as I need to get a prototype up and running to show the board. I simply copied an exisiting vm install and connected worked a treat thanx.

    If I may, another quick question before I spend the day searching. Say I have 2003 server [LAN], 2003 server [DMZ] and an xp client [WAN], I would normally allow these to talk via NAT on a hardware firewall. How is this achievable in the VM scenario? I have placed the desktop clients on 192.168.45.0 range, DMZ server on 10.10.0.0 range & SQL server on 192.168.168.0 range. The desktop vms can ping each other nicely, but I cannot get them to talk either server or indeed get either server to talk to each other, baffling me? I guess I cant open port 1433 from DMZ 2 LAN can I or in fact any port just to get this working?

    Thax again..

    G
     
    WIP: MCSA 2003

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