ESXI 5 - DL380 G7 - DR - HA - vMotion - x2 NICs (8 Ports) - LAN - WAN - Subnets

[TrevorDustan]

Dear VMware Community

Is anyone up for a challenge???  Being totally new to VMware (3 weeks of reading and watching videose etc) I’m hoping this will start a discussion on how best to setup, configure and deploy my new virtual environment in a 3 step phase for phase 1 to go live  in the New Year of 2012, first quarter for head office then so on.  I am currently reading VMware vSphere Design, VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive and Mastering VMware vSphere 5.

Bit of background on our internal recourses and knowledge:-

There are 2 IT guys, myself (TD) and JP.  JP has been with the same company and in IT for about 5 years looking after printers, ADSL, physical workstations and SBS 2003 servers across the sites, I’ve been in IT for about 12 years covering SMB market (10-100 users) mainly on printers, workstations, basic LAN’s and WANs, Microsoft servers from SBS 2003 to 2010, Server 2003 to 2008 R2, Exchange 2003 to 2010, Draytek routers, wireless AP’s and unmanaged switches.

Bit of background on our company setup:-

We have 1 company but 3 separate sites…  Site 1 Head Office, Site 2 and Site 3 (like a franchise) so each site runs their own facility in terms of accounts, staff etc etc but IT is covered from Head Office.

Site 1 has 50 users with a SBS 2003 Server, SQL Server, Intranet, Helpdesk and Reporting PC.

                SQL is only used by 10 users for an internal application.

                10MB/10MB Internet Leaded Line

Site 2 has 50 users with a SBS 2003 server and Server 2003 std, AD, DC, DHCP, DNS etc

                Server 2003 std runs a small app by a third-party company which send a bit of info a week.

                10MB/10MB Internet Leaded Line

Site 3 has 30 users with Std 2003 server, AD, DHCP, DNS etc and mail is pop collected from the net.

                2x - 30MB-D/7MB-Up   BT Infinity Internet Line

Each site now has a Draytek 2830n 1GB connection with an idle site to site vpn using ipsec roughly 20MB throughput and an average of 15ms ping (no traffic is being sent over the lines at the moment), x3  24 port HP Procurve unmanaged switches, therefore each site has its own separate domain, AD, DC, DNS, DHCP etc and IP structure.  This makes it a real pain to manage and look after.

Adding all the sites OS’s, Data, Mail etc etc I will use aprox 1.5TB

What I am looking to achieve at a realistic budget for 130 users:-

Virtual    (that’s why I’m here.  LOL)

Reasonable Performance   without having to go to a full blown SAN environment for 3 sites

vMotion  -  HA  -  DR  -  Business Continuity  -  Easy Backup and Restore  -  Central management – Central Storage, Redundancy  -  Some kind of failover (but not FT), Site to Site Replication and ideally No SPOF.

I have just purchased the following kit for testing then to use in the live environment  and buy the additional kit if it’s the correct way to go.

HP HP/3COM Layer 3 Routing V1910-16G Ethernet Switch 16 Port  - x2

HP 633405-421 PROLIANT DL380 G7 E5649 2.53 6C SFF P410I/256 460W  -  x2

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06b/15351-15351-3328412-241475-241475-4091412-5064836.html

HP 500662-B21 RAM 30GB per server (3 x 8 GB) - DDR3-1333/PC3  -  x6

HP 605835-B21 HP 1TB 6G SAS 7.2K 2.5in MDL -  x6

HP 581286-B21 HP 600Gb 6G SAS 10K rpm SFF Dual Port -  x6

HP                   8 GB Secure Digital High Capacity CLASS 10 Ultimate  -  x2

HP 516914-B21 HP DL380 G7 8SFF CAGE KIT for 8 SFF bays  -  x2

HP 503296-B21 HOT PLUG REDUNDANT POWER SUPPLY 460W  -  x2

HP 593722-B21 HP NC365T Gigabit Ethernet Card - PCI Express 16x -  x2

HP 468406-B21 SAS Controller - Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) - PCI 2 Express  -  x2

QNAP 8TB TS-459 Pro II 4 bay Turbo NAS  -  x1  (No second RAID Controller)

MS Datacentre 2008 R2  -  x6

MS Exchange 2010  -  x1

My thoughts for 130 users across 3 sites are:-

Bring the entire group into 1 local domain with single sign on and server 2008 R2 DFS replication.

Head Office Hosts will have x2 Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers  DC01 and DC02 (Primary and Secondary DC’s)

1 IP structure and subnet across the group

Site 1  -  192.168.0.X  255.255.0.0

Site 2  -  192.168.1.X  255.255.0.0

Site 3  -  192.168.2.X  255.255.0.0

Have 1 exchange server at head office for the group.  Server 2008 R2 – Exchange 2010 Std

Have 1 Intranet server at head office for the group.  Server 2008 R2

Have 1 Helpdesk server at head office for the group.  Server 2008 R2

Have 1 DC server at head office for the group.  Server 2008 R2

Have 1 Intranet server at head office for the group.  Server 2008 R2

                Having enough hardware at the 2^nd site to bring up head office VM’s in a DR situation.

Site 2 hosts will have DC03 and DC04 Vm’s

Site 3 hosts will have DC05 and DC06 Vm’s

VMware Standard acceleration kit with up to 8 cpu’s

x6 DL380 G7 servers (spec above)  -  x2 servers at each site with single 6 core cpu for each server

With either  x16 - 10k 600Gb SAS  OR  x16 1TB 7.2k 6GB MDL SAS

x2,  4 port NIC’s   -  4 ports on-board  -  4 ports HP NC365T

HP P4000 VSA across the x16 drives on both servers for HA and vMotion

Some Kind of backup software to QNAP

x2  QNAP 8TB NAS,  x1 at Head Office,  x1 at Site2 to backup VM’s to   (QNAP to QNAP allow for Site to Site replication)

My budget is roughly:-

About £50k/60k give or take a bit.   Just brought 10k worth of kit leaving 40k/50k.

My questions are:-

1)      Would this setup and kit looks if it would do the job with future expansion?

2)      What’s the recommendations and how would I go about configuring the IP structure/subnets and vswitches/pswitches/groups etc to which physical ports?

3)      Are there any other recommendations or suggestions for me to look at bearing in mind I’ve never touch vmware before and I will be doing the setup, configuration and deployment?

I know, don’t tell me   “I’ve got my hands full”    LOL  any help would be great.

Thanks In advanced

Trevor

[JPK871]

The biggest recommendation I can give you (this comes from experience).... find an experienced VMware consultant and have them assist you in your initial build out.  They should be able to provide you with best practices and ensure that you are starting down your path to virtualization on the right foot.  When we did our initial install we tried on our own and out of fear of the unknown brought someone in to help and it couldnt have been more worth it.  We received basic VMware how-to's and knew our infrastructure was built correctly from the beginning.

[TrevorDustan]

Hi JPK871 thank you for your suggestion, I have got someone to come in for a couple of hours to go through this however originally I had 3 providers/suppliers in give me quotes and a recommended solution for the complete job “all Enterprise Partners” (This was for VMWare Infrastructure only) but I ended up with 3 different answers and completely different solutions even down to hard drives from a basic 3 site - 6 host setup (but missing the other 2 sites off completely for backup) to an Enterprise level multi-site SAN setup (£150,000) bearing in mind we only have a 150 users across the 3 sites within 8 mile of each other and 6 basic vm’s running at Head Office (DC1 – DC2,  1 exchange 2010) and 1 SQL 2008 server for 5 users.  So my concern is “are these recommendations all a sales tactic to sell more stuff and do I really need it?” I now have reservations on who I can really trust on what they say, as I don’t know too much about VMWare, they could sell me a full datacentre for all I know and could be none the wiser?  Which is why I was hoping for some feedback on the technical side of things about what I should be looking at with my VMWare setup.

The first question is, does the kit look if it will be up for the job with either 8x 1TB midline SAS 7.2k or 8x 600GB SAS 10K drives on a RAID5?  Our IOPS seem to peak at about 300 hundred in the day across all 4 servers at Head Office.

I have installed a Kingston 8GB ultimate XX 233x/35MB SD Card into the server mothboard for the ESXI host, is this good practice then to use VSA across the 2 hosts on the internal storage.

As for Datastores? If I have 1 Exchange – 1 SQL – 2 Domain Controllers with ADFS replication am I best to partition the RAID5 into 4 partitions so when I setup the datasotes I can create 1 store for each server?  i.e. DS-Exch   DS-SQL    DS-DC1    DS-DC2  and so on

Any suggestions on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[meistermn]

Maybe an option for you:

VMware vSphere 4.1 Essentials for Retail and Branch Offices

http://store.vmware.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=vmware&id=ProductDetai...

Note:

• Minimum initial purchase size of 10 packages is required (1 Starter Kit includes licenses for 10 sites).
  
• To purchase more than 10, purchase the Add-On in increments of 1 package each.
  

Example: To virtualize 25 branch offices, purchase 1 Starter Kit and 15 Add-Ons.

[JPK871]

I'd be curious to see a detailed diagram of what you intend it to look like in the end.  Do you have any?  I would think you would have one that shows the physical build (physical servers, network cards, switches, WAN connectivity, storage) and then the VMware configuations (replication, vswitches, datastores).  That would make is much easier to understand your thoughts and help to better provide feedback.

[TrevorDustan]

Thanks for the suggestion meistermn I was hoping to go with the latest version of 5.x standard acceleration kit with 8 cpu's as each server (6 servers) has a single 6 core cpu.

Hi JPK871

As for a detailed network plan the only thing i have is the end result plan "see attached" but nothing in detail as yet because this is where i mainly need help, nic - replication - vswitches - datastores - vsa etc best practices setup and config.

Let me know if you need anything else to make things easier.

Many Thanks

[SantiniStorMagi]

Hi Trevor

Have you looked into Storage Virtual Appliances (SVAs) to solve the storage need, StorMagic's SvSAN is a Storage Virtual Appliance specifically developed for Multi-Site / ROBO environments and by what you are looking to achieve it sound like it would be a solid fit.

Our SVA has been integrated into environments ranging from 1 - 100 sites, and the software come packed with great features. Take a look: http://www.stormagic.com/SvSAN.php

We're also hosting a webinar on the 14th on the topic "choosing the right SVA and why the german army selected an SVA" it's not going to be a sales pitch on SvSAN just to educate on the practices and what to look for in an SVA. check it out you may find it helpful: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/594450694

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions

[abbie11 · Accepted solution]

Hi

I'd be curious to see a detailed diagram of what you intend it to look like in the end.

I would be suggest please download some video from youtube or itune where lot of best practise available . or you can dowonload some product psecific best practise .

_________
Good luck!