Advice for Hyper-v deployment on windows server

Question

We just bought two new servers that have windows server standard 64 bit sp2 on them. Relevant Hardware:
Dual Xeon E5430 @ 2.66
16 Gig Ram
6 143 GB 15,000 RPM SAS SCSI on Raid 5 for total of 544GB Hard Disk

We are attempting to consolidate 6 old servers into these two new ones.

My thinking is we run hyper-v and make both servers the same in the aspect of being able to run 2-3 virtual servers each and deploy our web site on one VM, slq server on one VM and other stuff on another VM. So basically we would have the physical servers mirror themselves. We could then allocate most of the resources on server 1 for the website VM (live) and allocate most of the resources on server 2 to the sql server VM (live). The left over resources could serve up the other things from either left over VM.

Server 1
Parent/Hyper-v Host : Backup Domain Controller
VM1 : Website (Production)
VM2 : SQL Server (Backup/Testing)
VM3 : Imaging and other apps

Server 2
Parent/Hyper-v Host : Primary Domain Controller
VM1 : Website ( Testing / Backup)
VM2 : SQl Server (Production)
VM3 : Imaging and other apps

So if either physical server had a catastrophic failure we could easily flip IP's and keep everything running. Any of the VMs get corrupted we could get up and running with the backup VM on the other server. Any thoughts on this setup or better ways of doing things would be appreciated since this really isn't my area of expertise.

Answer 1

What I would suggest and what I use at my company.

I have three host servers that are setup much like your servers. 16 GB RAM and lots of disk.

What I have found is that we don't have memory issues but I do tend to run out of disk so much planning is required to pull this off correctly.

A few things to know about Hyper-V. Just recently they released a version of 2k8 that just a hyper-v server and nothing else this will reduce overhead of the host. I have not tried it, but I have had a ton of success using hyper-v on Server 2k8 core, which is the next best thing. I love the setup that we have core makes so easy.

Second thing to remember about hyper-v...you can present guests with physical storage. So what I would do if I was you is do exactly what you are planning, but buy yourself if you can a couple of TB esata western digital drives and store your images using DFS on them. If you don't have a domain you could easily stand up on this beefy hardware a domain controller on each host.

There are a few gotcha's using 2k8 prior to the latest service pack. So make sure your Host is fully updated before you deploy the hyper-v role.

Remember that you have to take down the guests to be able to patch the host machine.

The last real gotcha that I have run into will not make sense till you boot your first VM. On the left hand side where all the hardware of the VM is defined. You will want to remove all the non attached hardware. Especially the SCSI adapter if you are using IDE and the IDE adapter if you are using the SCSI. If you don't you can lose control of the Host due to some bug in hyper-v.

My email is in my profile if you want to ask anything else. Your instincts are correct in your setup!