Infrastructure built by the apprentices in a school

[mnemonic]

Hello LTT forums,

 

I live in France and I'm sharing with this community a project that was proposed by multiple "intervenants" (people who teach us subjects at school) to us who are in a apprenticeship school

 

Our current state in IT infrastructure is limited, meaning only the basics are given to us (access to internet, power and school outlook)

 

The direction has approved of this project with others of the head of our school to engange to deploy a IT infrastructure for our needs in education

 

Since most of us are students, and we learn computer technology, we have to bring our own laptops capable to do emulation (vmware workstation, cisco packet tracer & more)

 

Some of our tutors have been happily discarding their old IT equipement to this project (dell / HPE servers, cisco switches, etc) instead of recycling them or throwing them away.

 

We already have an agreement where we can install a 25u rack with the servers given to us,

 

We would like to host a primary vsphere server that would be for administration, and two secondary ones for the students and teachers to access remotely 

 

This would enable the "intervenants" / teachers to prepare in advance courses for classes on subjects of virtualisation or networking, and would also enable us students to connect on the network to discover the technology

 

What would you recommend? 

[Dutch_Master]

This is your course work, we're not supposed to tell you what to do

 

There are 2 schools (see what I did here ) of thought here:

• traditional outline: switches on top, UPS on the bottom and servers inbetween
• less traditional outline: switches in the centre, UPS still on the bottom and servers top and centre.

Both have their pro's and con's, it's up to you which suits your situation best and wire up accordingly.

 

We expect an explanation why you've chosen which outline to use.

[mnemonic]

9 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

This is your course work, we're not supposed to tell you what to do

 

There are 2 schools (see what I did here ) of thought here:

• traditional outline: switches on top, UPS on the bottom and servers inbetween
• less traditional outline: switches in the centre, UPS still on the bottom and servers top and centre.

Both have their pro's and con's, it's up to you which suits your situation best and wire up accordingly.

 

We expect an explanation why you've chosen which outline to use.

The photo i shared is all the equipement we have for this project

[leadeater]

33 minutes ago, mnemonic said:

We would like to host a primary vsphere server that would be for administration, and two secondary ones for the students and teachers to access remotely 

How will you license this? VMware is no longer free. Will you be allowed you use the licenses from your academic institution they have or VMUG? Or are you not aware that it was made no longer free starting this year?

 

Your plans may have to change due to this. Or you could just keep reinstalling and running the trial period. Either way FYI just in case.

 

12 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

This is your course work, we're not supposed to tell you what to do

This doesn't sound like it's the course work, just a project to enhance teaching and learning materials aka hardware/software to teach and learn on.

 

Anyway no real advice or suggestions can be given because whatever is to be done needs to align with what and how things will be taught, so guidance from the teachers/instructors is going to be required or there is going to be no tangible benefit and outcome from this.

[RollinLower]

26 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

There are 2 schools (see what I did here ) of thought here:

eeyyyyyy

 

as for the OP: i would create a proxmox cluster. seeing how you have a lot of different nodes/hardware types you can still just plop them in te same cluster with proxmox.

[Dutch_Master]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

This doesn't sound like it's the course work, just a project to enhance teaching and learning materials aka hardware/software to teach and learn on.

Yes, I'm aware of that. But frankly, it's a bit ironic that a class of IT students and their teachers need advise on how to set up their rack. IMO, that's part of the education process. Maybe I'm just old school (s'cuse the pun )

 

23 minutes ago, mnemonic said:

The photo i shared is all the equipement we have for this project

Unfortunately, the image isn't very clear. Mind listing what you have available?

 

8 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

proxmox cluster

Not a bad idea! Alternatively, consider TrueNAS Scale. Or just plain Linux, like Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo or various other distro's suitable for server deployment. Actually, Proxmox is a pretty GUI layer on top of Debian anyway

[mnemonic]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

How will you license this? VMware is no longer free. Will you be allowed you use the licenses from your academic institution they have or VMUG? Or are you not aware that it was made no longer free starting this year?

 

Your plans may have to change due to this. Or you could just keep reinstalling and running the trial period. Either way FYI just in case.

 

This doesn't sound like it's the course work, just a project to enhance teaching and learning materials aka hardware/software to teach and learn on.

 

Anyway no real advice or suggestions can be given because whatever is to be done needs to align with what and how things will be taught, so guidance from the teachers/instructors is going to be required or there is going to be no tangible benefit and outcome from this.

We thought about this and thunk that it would be a good idea to ask one of the students tutors who's an official vmware reseller to gift us with some vsphere licenses,

But it hasn't been an advancement, so what we thought would be possible is to make the 2 DELL servers only run a trial ESXi (90 or 60 day trial?)

And since those 2 Dell servers are for students, it would relaunch each 30 or 60 days itself because several classes of 20/30~ish students will access them,

 

And yes the 1x HPE server that is for the administration of those 2 Dell vsphere's would run PROXMOX, 

but maybe NUTANIX? 

 

 

1 hour ago, Dutch_Master said:

Yes, I'm aware of that. But frankly, it's a bit ironic that a class of IT students and their teachers need advise on how to set up their rack. IMO, that's part of the education process. Maybe I'm just old school (s'cuse the pun )

 

Unfortunately, the image isn't very clear. Mind listing what you have available?

 

Not a bad idea! Alternatively, consider TrueNAS Scale. Or just plain Linux, like Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo or various other distro's suitable for server deployment. Actually, Proxmox is a pretty GUI layer on top of Debian anyway

Ofcourse ! here  

		Names	Processeur	Ram	Disks
		DELL powerEdge R710	2x2,53GHz	192 GB	2x146GB 15k,  2TB 7,2K, 4TB 7,2k
		DELL powerEdge R710	2x2,53GHz	192 GB	2x146GB 15k,  1TB 7,2K, 4TB 7,2k
		DELL SCv2020			15x1,2TB
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G9	(2x 2,30GHz)	96 GB	2 x300GB k
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G9	(2x 2,30GHz)	96 GB	2 x300GB k
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G9	1x 1,70GHz	16 GB	16x2TB 7,2k, 2 x300GB k
		HP MSA 2040			24x600 GB 10k
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G5	1x 2,33GHz	12 GB	4x146 GB 10k
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G5	1x 2,33GHz	3 GB	4x146 GB 10k
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G5	1x 2,33GHz	3 GB	4x146 GB 10k
		HPE Proliant DL 360 G6	1x 2,40GHz	6 GB	4x72 GB 15k
		HPE MSA P2000			10x146 GB 15k

* Sorry i pasted it raw before edit, but this is the equipement we have for the project

Edited February 27 by mnemonic
pasting raw file

[Jarsky]

You mention vSphere. The Hypervisor (ESXi) is no longer free since recent changes as a result of the Broadcom aquisition of VMware. Its now a yearly subscription per host, and is prohibitively expensive.  I believe VMUG Advantage is still available currently at a $200 subscription price (per year), but unsure how the ESXi licensing factors into this still....they also may not be happy if they find out its being used in production as VMUG is primarily targeted for those trying to gain certifications in VMware. 

 

You might be better with Proxmox if you want to do clustering between multiple servers (balance and/or move for maintenance), this also comes with ZFS support.

If you just need a Hypervisor and running them seperately, also consider Windows Server 2022 with Hyper-V role and Storage Spaces. Both do clustering but Proxmox is just *easier* and is closer to how VMware works.

[mnemonic]

48 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

You mention vSphere. The Hypervisor (ESXi) is no longer free since recent changes as a result of the Broadcom aquisition of VMware. Its now a yearly subscription per host, and is prohibitively expensive.  I believe VMUG Advantage is still available currently at a $200 subscription price (per year), but unsure how the ESXi licensing factors into this still....they also may not be happy if they find out its being used in production as VMUG is primarily targeted for those trying to gain certifications in VMware. 

 

You might be better with Proxmox if you want to do clustering between multiple servers (balance and/or move for maintenance), this also comes with ZFS support.

If you just need a Hypervisor and running them seperately, also consider Windows Server 2022 with Hyper-V role and Storage Spaces. Both do clustering but Proxmox is just *easier* and is closer to how VMware works.

Okay that sounds promising,

We were also tempting to go with the community edition of NUTANIX, apparently its like proxmox but on steroids

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, mnemonic said:

Okay that sounds promising,

We were also tempting to go with the community edition of NUTANIX, apparently its like proxmox but on steroids

Nutanix is very good yes, we used to use it for about 5 years to run ~1500 VMs but their licensing changed and it became a little too expensive since we were using ESXi as the hypervisor under Nutanix. You can use AHV (Nutanix hypervisor) or ESXi.

 

You'd more likely find Nutanix out in general businesses than Proxmox since they prefer to go with vendor supported infrastructure but really you won't notice much difference between the two unless you want to learn specific aspect about these solutions themselves rather than use them to host VMs.

 

I would actually suggest Community Nutanix myself but I doubt your G5 and G6 HP servers can be used with it.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

Stick with Proxmox.

Likely once you are gone they will find somebody who knows it. With NUTANIX it might be challenging. 

 

Regardless the real challenge is planning for the day you leave. Somebody needs to take over or this will run unmaintained for a few months, maybe years before it get's shutdown.

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Stick with Proxmox.

Likely once you are gone they will find somebody who knows it. With NUTANIX it might be challenging. 

 

Regardless the real challenge is planning for the day you leave. Somebody needs to take over or this will run unmaintained for a few months, maybe years before it get's shutdown.

That would make Nutanix a better option, it's entirely stable and designed to be the infrastructure platform of small to large businesses and made to be managed only via it's web GUI with everything standardized, simply and easily.

 

The only difference between Community and the Paid version is the ability to log support cases, which shouldn't be necessary in this deployment.

 

Literally Nutanix whole deal and business model is trying to take VMware customers, you don't do that if it's hard to manage the thing.

 

Proxmox being open source doesn't make it more likely someone else will be able to manage it, know anything about it or get better help from the community. All Nutanix documentation is publicly available and they have a community support forum, the actual support engineers and devs provide support as they get time as well.

 

I don't think either is a wrong choice, I don't think one is clearly a better choice either.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

@leadeater Around me most know Proxmox but not Nutanix. As such it's far more likely to find somebody who knows Proxmox and takes on the project.