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Virtual ICT Environment
Hello Guys,
I have really enjoyed the thoughts and ideas shared so I am throwing in my two cents.
As a quick summary we are in the middle of virtualising the majority of our ICT environment and will be keeping some servers as physical in order to avoid problems we experienced with a prototype virtual network, some points of which have been mentioned above (Physical DC/DHCP/DNS, SCSI/SAS Tape Library, Security Systems). We are a small size organisation with 80 users and a two or three man ICT business unit.
The new infrastructure was designed based on business requirements meeting with business leaders and business app owners that then formed technical requirements that then form technical specifications for the required hardware. A key ICT goal is to make it easy to support while delivering better performance than at present.
Below is a highl-level overview of the HW architecture without getting into the specifics of the configurations:
2x identical blade based racks configured with:
Hypervisor:
Hyper-V Based - For our organisation there was no right or wrong answer here. Either could do the job we required (we are not really pushing the advanced features provided by either technology just the basics) what is more important is for it to be stable, responsive and easy to support. Our prototype environment had both Hyper-V and VMWare. Even though VMWare is currently the more mature technology we were happy with the capability provided by Hyper-V and have the option to add VMWare at a later date in a mixed environment if required.
Networking:
VLANs will be put in place to allow for separation of prod and test/dev environments and also to split up Management, Data, Internet and out of band management traffic.
Physical Servers:
Primary Domain Controller (AD, DHCP, DNS) (1 rack only) - This is to allow authentication even when virtual hosts are down as experienced in a prototype virtual environment
Management Server - Tools Box (SAS interface for Tape Library, SCVMM, AV, SAN tools, Backup Server, WSUS) - Support ICT admin goal of minimising the number of servers you have to login to, by centralising as many management tools on a few management boxes as possible
Database Server (SQL) - Had advice from MS and SME to go either physical or virtual based on our environment but we decided to stay physical for the time being. Again no right or wrong answer for us here
Terminal Server (Windows Remote Desktop Services with Terminal Server Gateway) - Support Flexible Work Arrangement initiative from management (Part time, job sharing, remote employees)
Security Systems PCs - Will stay physical until we confirm pass through to VM of proprietary cable connections
Virtual Host Servers:
1x primary VM host server hosting: Exchange, Office Communicator, SharePoint, Project Server, IT Job Tracking and Backup VMs: DCs, AV, SCVMM, Backup SW
1x identical VM host server as redundancy for primary VM host server (there is also a second rack that provides total redundancy for the primary rack)
For both VM host server the licencing model stacks well and position the organisation to easily and dynamically growth VMs with minimal licence overhead in the future
Storage:
iSCSI SAN (Will store business apps, VM disks and backups for new backup strategy)
NAS (some backups, software library)
Peripherals:
Tape Library (still maintaining tapes for off-site and archive purposes and to compliment the new backup strategy)
Again this approach suits our size organisation and environment, and there are many variations to achieving a similar goal.
Good luck everyone planning or performing a virtualisation project.
I have really enjoyed the thoughts and ideas shared so I am throwing in my two cents.
As a quick summary we are in the middle of virtualising the majority of our ICT environment and will be keeping some servers as physical in order to avoid problems we experienced with a prototype virtual network, some points of which have been mentioned above (Physical DC/DHCP/DNS, SCSI/SAS Tape Library, Security Systems). We are a small size organisation with 80 users and a two or three man ICT business unit.
The new infrastructure was designed based on business requirements meeting with business leaders and business app owners that then formed technical requirements that then form technical specifications for the required hardware. A key ICT goal is to make it easy to support while delivering better performance than at present.
Below is a highl-level overview of the HW architecture without getting into the specifics of the configurations:
2x identical blade based racks configured with:
Hypervisor:
Hyper-V Based - For our organisation there was no right or wrong answer here. Either could do the job we required (we are not really pushing the advanced features provided by either technology just the basics) what is more important is for it to be stable, responsive and easy to support. Our prototype environment had both Hyper-V and VMWare. Even though VMWare is currently the more mature technology we were happy with the capability provided by Hyper-V and have the option to add VMWare at a later date in a mixed environment if required.
Networking:
VLANs will be put in place to allow for separation of prod and test/dev environments and also to split up Management, Data, Internet and out of band management traffic.
Physical Servers:
Primary Domain Controller (AD, DHCP, DNS) (1 rack only) - This is to allow authentication even when virtual hosts are down as experienced in a prototype virtual environment
Management Server - Tools Box (SAS interface for Tape Library, SCVMM, AV, SAN tools, Backup Server, WSUS) - Support ICT admin goal of minimising the number of servers you have to login to, by centralising as many management tools on a few management boxes as possible
Database Server (SQL) - Had advice from MS and SME to go either physical or virtual based on our environment but we decided to stay physical for the time being. Again no right or wrong answer for us here
Terminal Server (Windows Remote Desktop Services with Terminal Server Gateway) - Support Flexible Work Arrangement initiative from management (Part time, job sharing, remote employees)
Security Systems PCs - Will stay physical until we confirm pass through to VM of proprietary cable connections
Virtual Host Servers:
1x primary VM host server hosting: Exchange, Office Communicator, SharePoint, Project Server, IT Job Tracking and Backup VMs: DCs, AV, SCVMM, Backup SW
1x identical VM host server as redundancy for primary VM host server (there is also a second rack that provides total redundancy for the primary rack)
For both VM host server the licencing model stacks well and position the organisation to easily and dynamically growth VMs with minimal licence overhead in the future
Storage:
iSCSI SAN (Will store business apps, VM disks and backups for new backup strategy)
NAS (some backups, software library)
Peripherals:
Tape Library (still maintaining tapes for off-site and archive purposes and to compliment the new backup strategy)
Again this approach suits our size organisation and environment, and there are many variations to achieving a similar goal.
Good luck everyone planning or performing a virtualisation project.
Posted by ictsaint
Updated - 8th Feb 2012
