This week we finished the process of converting our year-old Dell 2950 server previously running Win2K3 x64 to our new VMware ESX insfrastructure. We had SQL Server 2005 on that server and virtualized it. Unfortunately, we saw a Shelby performance drop around 50% when we moved the database to the new virtualized server running SQL. So now we have some tuning to do. Other than that, this has been the smoothest major server upgrade project I've ever seen. Many thanks to our ESX consultant, Cameron Shove, for making that possible.
The next step for us is to virtualize three older physical servers. These are old enough and/or have significant enough issues that we aren't going to try P2V. Instead, we are building virtual servers from scratch and migrating the applications and services. We have a good start on virtualizing a terminal server and an Exchange server. Last to get virtualized will be our main file server.
When the project is complete by the middle of July, we will have only one remaining physical Windows server in our central campus data center - a server that will run ARCserve with disk and tape backup storage. All of our production will be on approximately 13 virtual servers running on the two physical Dell 2950s sharing the Dell/EMC AX150i iSCSI SAN. It's going to be sweet!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Please keep us all updated - I'm concerned that the Dell AX150i will not deliver sufficient performance for your environment. You're limited to just 12 disks with that unit and your upgrade path to more/better/faster is extremely painful. iSCSI is definitely the right direction. Have you looked at LeftHand Networks for your iSCSI SAN? I know the costs are much higher, but the benefits should be well worth it. Far more features, better scalability (scales in performance, availability, and capacity)...
Post a Comment