Hi Folks, I wanted to dabble with server 2008 and I would like some help in setting up a small virtual network of about 1-2 servers and 2-4 clients. The main consideration for me is that I want something simple as I want to spend my time wither server 2008 and not a huge amount of time setting up the network. I would prefer something that I can run on top of Windows 7 and something that will let me take snapshots as I know I will mess up and reinstalling server 2008 every time will be a pain. So what do you guys recommend? Thanks
You want to recommend the software? Why not use Hyper-V and Terminal Server in Server 2008? What are you trying to achieve? 1 physical machine with 3-6 vms on it set up in a network?
Thanks I was thinking that but as work we have a VMware set up and I have no experience of Hyper v. To do this, would i need to set up a dual boot machine with windows 7 and server 2008 or can I install a standalone hyper-v on windows 7? and yes, thatys exactly what I am trying to do
Are you trying to just share files across the computers? If you are not you do need to realize that running VM's will take a considerable ammount of resources. You will also need to look into Active Directory. What rig you running for the server?
If you are just setting up a test network on a current windows install, use VMware Server - a free download and dead easy to use. You can then setup as many virtual machines as you want running any OS you want. Remember Virtual machines generally need less ram than 'real' machines (e.g. at work our auth server running Server 2008RC2 runs fine in 2Gb). Also - only allocate 1 core per machine unless there is a good reason to do otherwise (you lock cores to one machine that might not be active otherwise). With 12Gb you will easily be able to run a virtual server2008RC2 machine + several virtual win 7 clients. On a real system, you would ideally use VMware ESXi as the host OS and manage you servers with VSphere client (well thats what we do). Hope this helps.
Thanks! That answers my question. I will investigate further tomorrow. Have some Rep and its only your third post!
I had a play with this and its just great. I managed to set up a 2008 server and a windows 7 machine to okay with in no time. Now to find my ad 2008 book.
I use Virtualbox, an open source VM solution. IMO the best visualization software, as it is free no matter how many machines you run it on.
I run VirtualBox at work for my XP sessions (Handy as over 95% of our users run Win XP), and it does the job fine, especially handy being able to PXE boot it (and it actually talking to our PXE server), and taking snap shots @home I'm using it for the virtual machines for Windows 7... Will look to move to ESXi once I've mastered windows 7 and start working at mastering server 2008, purely for the experience....
+1 for VirtualBox, highly recommended if you want it to run on top of Win7 and have snapshots. For free.
vmware is better imo.. virtualbox works but there's funky issues that vmware doesn't have.. the player is free too running vmware workstation here.. mainly talking about linux in the vm though
WMware server also supports 64bit guests and is also free no matter how many guests you run. I believe the only thing they charge you for when using VMware server is tech support via their official system, but you can still post on the community forums for free.
I've had a fair amount of experience on virtualisation (VMware vSphere / Linux KVM / VirtualBox). VirtualBox Good for desktop virtualisation - i.e. you have a base OS (Windows/Mac/Linux) and you want to run a server or desktop or two on top of it. Since it relies on the base OS, it's realistically only as reliable as that OS. Even though VirtualBox itself is released as "free software" under the GPL, the "Extension Pack" is still released under their PUEL, which means you can't use it in a commercial/work environment. This pack includes features like USB passthrough, PXE booting for Intel NICs. You may not want these additions, but it's worth considering, as VBox isn't 100% "free". It is cross-platform so I have it installed on my desktop (Windows/Linux dual-boot) and my MacBook (OS X/Linux dual-boot) but I wouldn't trust it with full-server virtualisation although many do, and there is/was a PHP management interface floating around somewhere. Linux KVM I've only recently been exposed to KVM, but it's been proven to work. As it's based on a standard Linux server install, it's nice and stable, and you can do nice enterprise things like migration (not sure if this is "live" migration) and centralised management though the virt-manager Linux app. The downside is that there is now GUI client for Windows, and you need to know Linux basics (package management, etc) to configure. VMware vSphere VMware is currently the biggest player by far in the virtualisation arena. I use VMware vSphere Hypervisor at home to run my virtual servers. It has a very nice GUI client (that only runs on Windows, still waiting for cross-compatibility) and is very easy to deploy. vSphere acts as a "hypervisor" which is basically an extremely stripped-down OS (installed size is ~100MB, and yes I did mean Megabytes) that manages system resources for VMs. One thing to note with VMware - their product naming is confusing. vSphere is the generic name they give their commercial hypervisor products (separate from VMware Server, Workstation, Player). ESX and ESXi are platforms - ESXi is the newer. vSphere Hypervisor is the name of the free (as in cost) version of their hypervisor range, which uses the ESXi platform. vSphere 4.1 is the current version, with vSphere 5 due at some point in 2011. Xen/Hyper V Personally, I am not anti-Microsoft but I would honestly never touch Hyper V. This is because even though many class Windows Server 2008 as stable, I would not trust it to effectively manage multiple VMs. It can handle live migration, however there have been performance gripes and every review I've read has pretty much discounted it. Yes, it's a free install, but there's a reason for that. I've not played with Xen (either the free Citrix version or the open source version) so I really don't have an opinion on it. My previous boss in head office (I was based in their London satellite office) used Xen pretty much exclusively, so it obviously has some pedigree, but I couldn't tell you advantages/disadvantages. My Recommendation My advice (after all that waffle) is to use a dedicated virtualisation box/server, and use VMware vSphere Hypervisor to ensure compatibility for the rest of your work infrastructure. To explain, you said you wanted 1-2 servers and 3-4 clients. Measuring this out in maximum RAM capacity: 2 x 4GB for servers + 4 x 2GB for clients = 16GB of RAM (not including any host OS RAM) - most entry-level virtualisation platforms don't use de-duplication techniques so the amount of RAM you give a VM is ultimately what it can have, so you don't want to over-commit. You can build a modest desktop PC (or even buy a 1U server if you have the budget - this can always be deemed a "testing" playground for more projects, just can the VMs and reconfigure) for this. 3 x 1TB drives in RAID5 (preferably hardware RAID but fakeRAID will do) will provide all the storage you need. You can configure the networking such that only your test DC will have two NICs and none of your clients will interface with the physical network (you can configure DNS to only respond to one NIC so it will be transparent to the rest of your network).
Your comment about MS and their Hyper-V having performance issues - We use it extensively via our lead contractor managed datacentre, and have 30+ VM's on a single physical box, and it works fine, and is definitely scalable. We have been used by MS as a test case. I believe the base OS is Server 2008 on the VM host, and we use Server 2003 fro the VM's. I do have to say that we have had performance related issues, and these have been mostly attributed to set up conflicts between VM's or Firmware failings. I'd love to read any of the material that you've seen that challenge Hyper-V as a robust platform simply to understand some more. We've got a project to virtualise a physical box going on soon, so I'll be able to directly compare performance between the Physical machine and the Virtual. Both will be running the same processes, but we're upgrading the instance of SQL Server to 2008 R2 64 Bit from 2005, but the processors are being reduced from Quads @ 2.4 Ghz to Dual @ 2.93 to see how they compare for starters. I know it's not strictly apples and apples, but it will give us an indication...
It's not to say that I don't like Hyper V, I just don't trust Windows as an OS so I avoid it wherever I can. Just the thought of trusting 30+ VMs to a Windows box sends shivers down my spine! Re: the reviews, I was researching a three-way comparison between Xen/Hyper V/vSphere, unfortunately I don't have the links to hand - I left the company 3 months ago. Personally I'd rather go with a "tried and true" solution that can be verified. For example, how well does Hyper V fare with Linux guests? Does it even support them officially? Can you bond/team NICs for performance/resilience? How efficient is the OS? Having a full-fat OS on a virtualisation platform just doesn't make sense. As an aside, I'm also an advocate of Free Software (as defined by the FSF, which I'm a member of) so I will always champion the use of non-proprietary software, except in the cases where proprietary software does a better job - I'm fast leaning towards switching my home server to KVM.
