Server vm and windows

[utah960]

Hey Everyone

     I have been recently been planing a storage server for my production team hat i work with and there is currently four pc's under the desk to run 4 different programs that need their own computer to run one of them is recording for sound another one is used for creating slides and sending them to the projectors and the last one is for running a continuous loop of announcements on screens in the other room. And since we are building a storage server I was thinking that we could take out all those systems and put in one very powerful systems to run 4 vm's for the programs that i listed above plus the forth having windows server or free nas on it. I know the machines just running windows to run the show will work fine but im not sure if the server vm will work like a stand alone server would.

 It Would be great to know if I could do this.

 Thanks

Utah     

 

[Lurick]

Yah it would work, get something like ESXi and then you can allocate resources to each VM and you just use Remote Desktop to connect to each computer.

[SLAYR]

You could, it would cost a bit if you already have the computers, and there is always the possibility of something going wrong with the server, and every computer will be down.

 

And depending on expansion cards needed, you will have to check for virtulization compatibility, such as nvidia gtx gpus cannot be passed through into vms with EXSi.

[samiscool51]

depending on what they will be doing the hardware might be different

if the software benefits from GPU acceleration then use something like UnRAID

if it does not then use Hyper-v or VSphere

 

depends...

[Mikensan]

FreeNAS really enjoys being the only one, or at least on bare metal. You can definitely virtualize it and dedicate a HBA card to it, but you may be better off doing something like storage spaces / flexraid.

 

From what I gather you're just asking if it's possible - definitely. As to the "how" going to need more specifics on budget and requirements.

[handruin]

On 9/27/2016 at 5:44 PM, utah960 said:

Hey Everyone

     I have been recently been planing a storage server for my production team hat i work with and there is currently four pc's under the desk to run 4 different programs that need their own computer to run one of them is recording for sound another one is used for creating slides and sending them to the projectors and the last one is for running a continuous loop of announcements on screens in the other room. And since we are building a storage server I was thinking that we could take out all those systems and put in one very powerful systems to run 4 vm's for the programs that i listed above plus the forth having windows server or free nas on it. I know the machines just running windows to run the show will work fine but im not sure if the server vm will work like a stand alone server would.

 It Would be great to know if I could do this.

 Thanks

Utah     

 

 

Yes, this will work but keep in mind that if you're the one building and planning this new storage server you'll also be the one who maintains it when it has issues.  I know that sounds obvious but keep in mind that if you go with a virtualized solution that you're putting all your eggs in a single basket.  Any time there is a problem all VMs may suffer.  Any time you need to do maintenance you need to schedule this with all VMs on the same system.  I'm a huge user and fan of virtualization but it does take some more planning and thought into all the collateral components and use cases that may be affected by this consolidation.  Really what you need to define is what are the goals you're trying to accomplish by virtualizing vs bare metal deployments and make sure they're all a good fit.

 

Based on your description the one system that may need more attention in the configuration would be the system used for recording sound.  Depending on how involved and serious this system is, you may need certain IO ports or hardware devices to properly record sound in the OS.  Hypervisors can pass through certain devices but you should absolutely understand the use case of this system before recommending it be done in a VM to ensure it will work properly.  You may also want to isolate this VM onto its own LUN/storage for IO-sensitive recordings or consider using the storage as a raw device.

[Electronics Wizardy]

On 9/27/2016 at 2:44 PM, utah960 said:

I have been recently been planing a storage server for my production team

This is when you hire some one who knows what there doing. You also buy a prebuilt system from dell/hp/lenovo because support is needed if somehting goes wrong.