# Consolidating multiple servers to Win2k8; run it virtually or physically?



## DiGiTY (Oct 16, 2006)

I'm thinking of consolidating/migrating 5 old Win2k3/2k servers on a domain into one Win2k8 server. Since I literally just stepped in as the IT guy for this organization and don't know the exact reason for this current 5 server setup I'm thinking I should install Hyper-V Server and run that Win2k8 as a virtual machine instead. Again I don't know this network's history and don't want to assume the previous IT guy didn't know what he was doing with this asinine setup. I'd imagine running that new Win2k8 server as a virtual machine gives me more flexibility in case I do discover I need to have separate servers in the future.

Should I install Win2k8 physically or virtually?


P.S. - In case you were wondering, the current 5 (five) old physical servers run the following individually: domain controller, secondary domain controller, file server, QuickBooks server and antivirus server


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

You really need to do some research before you go hog wild trying to virtualize anything. Find out what roles each one of the current servers are running and see if some consolidation of roles can be done on those prior to doing any virtualization. All you will be doing otherwise is virtualizing old technology to keep it alive. You will still need all of those server roles in a virtualized environment.


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## DiGiTY (Oct 16, 2006)

Sorry, I think my post may be confusing - I do know the roles of each of the current 5 servers (listed in the P.S.) and I'm not asking if I should virtualize each of them. I'm decommissioning & retiring the current 5 servers by moving all of their roles/services to a new Win2k8 server. The question is should I fully occupy this new super superior server by installing Win2k8 physically or install it virtualized so I can run additional servers for future expansion or barring some new discovery about the network (that requires roles/services to run on separate servers)?

To give some perspective - the current servers range from Pentium III Win2k to Pentium 4 Win 2k3 tower servers with 512 MB max memory, the new server has a dual quad core XEON processor with 16 GB memory installed.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

That isn't how virtualization works. You still need a host OS like Server 2008 or VMWare and then create your guest OS's inside of it. Most host OS's also require a 64-bit environment to run in. You should at the very least have a guest OS for a primary domain controller and a backup domain controller. You can probably get away with using one of the domain controllers as a file & print server and even use the other as a QB server. You could probably get away with one guest, but there will be no redundancy if a DC were to ever go down.


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## DiGiTY (Oct 16, 2006)

I did mentioned in my original post that I'll be running these guest machines on Hyper-V Server.

Anyhoo, your recommendation to continue to keep servers separate is starting to feel right more and more. Ack! I was hoping technology has improved far enough along that we don't have to implement this damn old best practice anymore. I really don't feel like maintaining 3 to 4 servers and then on top of that convince the client they need to buy 2 to 3 additional AV and backup client licenses and pay me extra to maintain them monthly.

What if I had an UPS, redundant power supply, RAID 5 or 10, bare bones full system disaster recovery solution with incremental backups (i.e., ShadowProtect) for on-site and Amazon S3 for off-site backups... would that then justify going with the one server for all method??


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

I guess you did mention HyperV, sorry. It is not a technology reason for having servers separated by roles, it is by design and it is done for a reason. All of the stuff you mentioned having will do nothing for your end users or customers if your single guest 2008 server crashes and burns. You will have no authentication for users, no DHCP, no DNS, no file shares, etc. if you only run one DC.

If you have a solution that can have your backups restored within your SLA window and have everything functional by all means go with one virtual guest OS.


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## DiGiTY (Oct 16, 2006)

Yeah, you're right. One of their application servers just happen to fail during this thread. Thank goodness it only affected a small group of people!

Thanks!


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

I am not aware of all of the features of VMWare, but doesn't it have something like a failover where if one guest OS goes down there is an exact replica of the same OS that can take over? I think you can do stuff like this with VMotion.


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## DiGiTY (Oct 16, 2006)

Oh my, that VMotion would work perfectly, but it works on top of VMware vCenter and that's at least $6000. This client definitely can't spring for it.

Thanks again!


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