VM Servers

[Sycos]

Hello people,

 

I just got ask to find 4 servers, precisely « 4 x HP Proliant DL380P G8 », to do VM stuff. They'll have to host 2 DNS servers on 2 different physical machines throught VM software. It's supposed to be running of FreeBSD with a DNS server application called « BIND », but the truth is, maybe there is a better set-up than these options. The servers will be running with 2 GB Raid Controller with 64 GB of RAM, as well as a RAID 1+0 set-up. I was asking myself if there would be other servers similar to the model I quoted just above, and if there would be any OS (ZFS with VM?) or software that would be doing the job better than these ones? If you do, please share and explain how/why, thanks!

Share us your VM workstations set-up as it might light up some ideas! This is for a company, thus have in mind the same price point as the model I quoted. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Look at r720's there the dell version. Look at proxmox as the hypervisor.

 

If this is for a company id call up dell or lenovo or hpe for a premade solution, using used hardware and going diy seems great until down time comes.

 

Also asking these basic questions makes me thing you don't have much experience and are probably much better off hiring a it guy or getting a company to do this for you.

[dalekphalm]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Look at r720's there the dell version. Look at proxmox as the hypervisor.

 

If this is for a company id call up dell or lenovo or hpe for a premade solution, using used hardware and going diy seems great until down time comes.

 

Also asking these basic questions makes me thing you don't have much experience and are probably much better off hiring a it guy or getting a company to do this for you.

Agreed - even Dell or HPE can generally offer IT assistance with solutions design, installation, configuration, etc. Though a local IT consulting firm is the usual route for that kind of thing.

 

For a corporate solution, I'd highly consider ESXi as the hypervisor. Storage can be handled in a million different ways. A Dell or HPE hardware RAID Card w/ local RAID10 on each machine would certainly work, or looking at a DAS or SAN if a larger pool is needed.

 

@Sycos also make sure that a proper backup solution is in place for these servers (particularly, the VM's themselves).

[MysticalGnome]

11 hours ago, Sycos said:

Hello people,

 

I just got ask to find 4 servers, precisely « 4 x HP Proliant DL380P G8 », to do VM stuff. They'll have to host 2 DNS servers on 2 different physical machines throught VM software. It's supposed to be running of FreeBSD with a DNS server application called « BIND », but the truth is, maybe there is a better set-up than these options. The servers will be running with 2 GB Raid Controller with 64 GB of RAM, as well as a RAID 1+0 set-up. I was asking myself if there would be other servers similar to the model I quoted just above, and if there would be any OS (ZFS with VM?) or software that would be doing the job better than these ones? If you do, please share and explain how/why, thanks!

Share us your VM workstations set-up as it might light up some ideas! This is for a company, thus have in mind the same price point as the model I quoted. 

HP DL360 G8/9 would do just fine they only take up 1U in stead of 2U and perform the same, Dell PE R610 is also a good choice.
We used XenServer in the past and pooled several servers together with a SAN backend which worked great as it allowed us to live migrate VM's to another server so we could perform maintenance on the Xen host, we also use BIND and while maybe not the best DNS server perse it does perform great, the only thing I really don't like about it is that it is really easy to screw up the configuration with a typo.
 

[Sycos]

19 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Agreed - even Dell or HPE can generally offer IT assistance with solutions design, installation, configuration, etc. Though a local IT consulting firm is the usual route for that kind of thing.

 

For a corporate solution, I'd highly consider ESXi as the hypervisor. Storage can be handled in a million different ways. A Dell or HPE hardware RAID Card w/ local RAID10 on each machine would certainly work, or looking at a DAS or SAN if a larger pool is needed.

 

@Sycos also make sure that a proper backup solution is in place for these servers (particularly, the VM's themselves).

 

8 hours ago, MysticalGnome said:

HP DL360 G8/9 would do just fine they only take up 1U in stead of 2U and perform the same, Dell PE R610 is also a good choice.
We used XenServer in the past and pooled several servers together with a SAN backend which worked great as it allowed us to live migrate VM's to another server so we could perform maintenance on the Xen host, we also use BIND and while maybe not the best DNS server perse it does perform great, the only thing I really don't like about it is that it is really easy to screw up the configuration with a typo.
 

Thanks for the quick reply, I'll be sure to learn about those! I got aware that we would use VMware Free Edition as the hypervisor.

[Razor Blade]

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Look at r720's there the dell version. Look at proxmox as the hypervisor.

 

If this is for a company id call up dell or lenovo or hpe for a premade solution, using used hardware and going diy seems great until down time comes.

 

Also asking these basic questions makes me thing you don't have much experience and are probably much better off hiring a it guy or getting a company to do this for you.

 

19 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Agreed - even Dell or HPE can generally offer IT assistance with solutions design, installation, configuration, etc. Though a local IT consulting firm is the usual route for that kind of thing.

 

For a corporate solution, I'd highly consider ESXi as the hypervisor. Storage can be handled in a million different ways. A Dell or HPE hardware RAID Card w/ local RAID10 on each machine would certainly work, or looking at a DAS or SAN if a larger pool is needed.

 

@Sycos also make sure that a proper backup solution is in place for these servers (particularly, the VM's themselves).

Agree with the above. Calling up the manufacturer to get a quote would be advisable as doing this stuff yourself, learning along the way, is a great way to expand your knowledge but highly inadvisable for a business.

 

If you're just wanting to learn this stuff, you can get a used workstation off of eBay, install a hypervisor, and go to town with it. It doesn't have to be anything fancy if you're just learning.

[Sycos]

11 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

 

Agree with the above. Calling up the manufacturer to get a quote would be advisable as doing this stuff yourself, learning along the way, is a great way to expand your knowledge but highly inadvisable for a business.

 

If you're just wanting to learn this stuff, you can get a used workstation off of eBay, install a hypervisor, and go to town with it. It doesn't have to be anything fancy if you're just learning.

 

I am not alone, as this is for a company I am just new to doing this and this is the reason why they put me in charge so I would get more experience and knowledge of those things.

[dalekphalm]

15 minutes ago, Sycos said:

 

I am not alone, as this is for a company I am just new to doing this and this is the reason why they put me in charge so I would get more experience and knowledge of those things.

If I were your boss, I would be super impressed if you contacted Vendors/IT companies on your own, developed a complete solution, and got quotes for it. You'd get bonus points if you came back with 2-3 different "budget levels" (Eg: Good, better, best) to choose from.

 

You can do some of the work yourself to learn, but with company infrastructure like this, it's not exactly the best place to be messing around at will.

[Sycos]

23 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

If I were your boss, I would be super impressed if you contacted Vendors/IT companies on your own, developed a complete solution, and got quotes for it. You'd get bonus points if you came back with 2-3 different "budget levels" (Eg: Good, better, best) to choose from.

 

You can do some of the work yourself to learn, but with company infrastructure like this, it's not exactly the best place to be messing around at will.

Don't worry everything is under control.