Q: (from Gregory)
Thanks for helping out with a great launch event in Harrisburg! I enjoyed the day, learned a lot, and came away with some great software.
I am ready to purchase a new server, and I want to move ahead with virtualizing our company’s servers with Server 2008 and Hyper V when it is available. I have been looking for information to help me understand where I should put my dollars when specing out the server. Should I focus on the processors? Dual core or quad core? 1 or 2 processors? How much memory? What’s the best type and configuration of hard drives to set up 2 or 3 virtual servers? Should each virtual server have its own hard drive? Should the system have its own drive? Can I use SATA drives, or do I need to go with SCSI? Is an integrated dual LAN network card sufficient, or should I look at something more high powered for the NICs. You see what I’m getting at.
We have 2 servers presently, one is basically a domain controller, file server, DHCP and DNS server. The other is a terminal server and Sharepoint server. We have about 50 people logging into these servers. We don’t run Exchange, SQL server, or any intensive loads. I want to move both servers to virtual servers on the one new physical server, and still have room to add another virtual server or two down the road.
I don’t expect you to have answers to this, but I have been looking for guidance all over the Server 2008 pages on Microsoft’s website and have not found anything that can help me. I don’t trust the server manufacturer salesmen to give accurate answers yet on such a new product as Server 08. Can you direct me to some good info that can help me understand what I should be buying?
Thanks so much for any help.
A:
Just to confirm; Hyper-V, although very stable, is still in beta and is not recommended for critical production loads until it is released in about six months. With that out-of-the way, my recommendation for a first step would be to review the solution accelerator for virtualization found at: https://partner.microsoft.com/40048854?msp_id=solutionaccelerators.
Please provide any feedback you have, the team that has been collecting these accelerators is very interested.