Business Server Advice Wanted

[aubryscully]

Hi guys, so I am currently doing IT work for a small business and I need some server advice. So basically, their current setup is a custom built tower made by me in late 2014 (https://pcpartpicker.com/b/tcBPxr) except we have recently upgraded the 3TB Reds to 6TB Red Pros and upgraded to 32GB of DDR3 (non-ECC) RAM. Basically, the server is running Windows Server 2012 R2 with no VMs. Its job is to run QuickBooks Database Manager, host a shared network folder for users to access the Quickbooks database files, host another shared folder for all machines on the network to be continuously backed up using the built in backup feature of Windows 10, sync all files to Crashplan cloud, and the occasional other little random task. I do also want to note though that we don't use it as a domain controller connected to all of the machines or anything like that, but we are leveraging the use of several AD user accounts in order for users to 'log in' to the shared network folders via their workstations.

 

It has done well for the past 2 years with no component failures of any kind, but due to the business' growth, I would like to now upgrade them to a better setup. Here is the idea that I have so far:

-Purchase 2x used Dell R710s from eBay and put 2x 250GB SSDs in RAID1 in each.

-Load Hyper-V Server 2016 onto each R710

-Make a VM of Fedora to run QB Database manager and use failover clustering to make it highly available

 

Past this point, I'm a bit lost. Would I be able to make a VM of the Server 2012 R2 license that we have currently on the Hyper-V Server and run that VM with failover across the cluster? Also, as for storage, the R710s only have 2.5" caddies which really sucks since I want to use our 3.5" drives. What would be my best option for having highly available storage?

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, aubryscully said:

AD user accounts

So do you have AD or not? Run everything of AD if you don't and set up WSUS and Managed backus and GP it up.

 

What budget are you thinking

 

Here i what Id do. Buy a new dell r430 or two if you can. Your paying for support, but a r710 will work fine.

 

Id run centos instead of fedora for server stuff. With fedora you kinda haveto update it every 9 months for support, where centos has 10 years of support.

 

Why use hyper-v if you running linux guests?

 

Id look into esxi, it works the best in my experence, but ovirt on centos and proxmox and xen server all work fine.

 

For storage, you either make a software raid with something like gluster and ovirt, or get a nas/san. If you do nas/san, just use usb sticks in the server for boot.

 

Sorry if this is messy, i kinda just spewed out ideas.

 

 

[aubryscully]

@Electronics Wizardy Thanks for the info. So yes, we are running AD-DS for the sole purpose of having user accounts that people can access the shared network folder as. However, AD-DS isn't handling anything directly for anyone's machines. It is only housing the user accounts that have access to the shared files.

 

I would like for the budget to be as low as possible while still maintaining decent quality. Unfortunately, buying new Dell server hardware is out of the question. The support that they give isn't worth the extra cost to the business.

 

The only reason I picked Fedora was due to it being a compatible OS for QuickBooks Database Manager. It can also run on Red Hat or OpenSUSE. Would one of those options be better suited for that task?

 

I was only planning on running Hyper-V Server 2016 on both machines for the ability to do failover clustering. Is there a way that I could mimic that functionality with a different software solution?

 

For storage, is there an elegant way of utilizing 3.5" drives with the R710s? I would ideally like to have a RAID-1 array of the 6TB Red Pros on each box.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, aubryscully said:

@Electronics Wizardy Thanks for the info. So yes, we are running AD-DS for the sole purpose of having user accounts that people can access the shared network folder as. However, AD-DS isn't handling anything directly for anyone's machines. It is only housing the user accounts that have access to the shared files.

 

I would like for the budget to be as low as possible while still maintaining decent quality. Unfortunately, buying new Dell server hardware is out of the question. The support that they give isn't worth the extra cost to the business.

 

The only reason I picked Fedora was due to it being a compatible OS for QuickBooks Database Manager. It can also run on Red Hat or OpenSUSE. Would one of those options be better suited for that task?

 

I was only planning on running Hyper-V Server 2016 on both machines for the ability to do failover clustering. Is there a way that I could mimic that functionality with a different software solution?

 

For storage, is there an elegant way of utilizing 3.5" drives with the R710s? I would ideally like to have a RAID-1 array of the 6TB Red Pros on each box.

You can get r710 with 3.5 drives. You can also get a external drive box like a sa120. 

 

All the other hypervisors I mentioned all do fail over cluster and I could consider hyper-v to be the worst of the bunch. 

 

Centos is just redhat  but free so the software will run fine. 

[SCHISCHKA]

1 hour ago, aubryscully said:

Past this point, I'm a bit lost. Would I be able to make a VM of the Server 2012 R2 license that we have currently on the Hyper-V Server and run that VM with failover across the cluster?

you get license for 2 virtual machines with win server standard 2012/r2 provided the host is only used to host VMs, and you only use one host on one license. Watch out for MS SQL server fail over requirements if you are using MS SQL

[leadeater]

As above, @SCHISCHKA, Server 2012 R2 gives you the rights to run 2 virtual instances and if using Hyper-V the right to use it also as the hypervisor OS, but it must only be used for this role.

 

As for Linux QB cluster idea, how are you going to sync the data between the 2 servers to make the failover possible? DRBD + Pacemaker?

 

As @Electronics Wizardy said I'd use ESXi rather than Hyper-V, but the one plus with Hyper-V is Live Migration is a free feature where it is not for ESXi. Also without a shared storage sub system Hyper-V cannot fail VMs between hosts, neither can any other hypervisor for that matter. You can migrate VMs manually but that is a very long copy process and is not HA in any way.

 

Basically your justification for using Server 2016 Hyper-V isn't valid for the hardware configuration proposed.

 

Due to the above limitations I would forgo the purchasing of two servers as it doesn't give you much benefit or HA ability, not unless you use in VM/OS features like DRBD. The solution to this is of course buying a single server now and a storage array then later adding the second server. Down side is second hand storage arrays are still rather costly compared to server, you could build one using FreeNAS etc, but your heading down a rather risky path of self building and single points of failure.

 

To do it properly you need, end goal here: 2 servers, 1 storage array/NAS + spare parts, 1 backup NAS, offline or offsite backup copy and a really clear action plan to follow if something goes wrong.