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Need recommendations for on how to configure services to be delivered by servers

Tags:
  • Virtual Machine
  • Windows Server
  • Exchange Server
  • Virtualization
  • File Server
  • Business Computing
Last response: in Business Computing
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May 4, 2014 10:24:07 PM

Hello everyone, I am looking at implementing some services in a company, currently with 5-6 users. I am catering for no more than 10 users to support expansion in the near future.

Services/solutions I wish to implement include the following:
Microsoft Dynamics NAV and CRM
File Server
Exchange server

I understand that some "background" services are also required (e.g.: Active Directories, Domain Controller).

Supposed we can purchase 2 physical servers, what is a good configuration to deploy the above two services (possibly using virtualization)?

Answers or opinions to the above would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

More about : recommendations configure services delivered servers

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May 5, 2014 7:54:01 AM

If you buy a big enough server, you could virtualize everyone of those servers. However, I would probably do the following as a cost-effective approach:

1) Figure out which server is going to have the highest load. From your list, I would say it's your Dynamics server. Dynamics runs as client/server - the server has the database.

2) Create 1 physical server to host the virtualized Dynamics server and another virtual server to run as the file server. File services aren't too intensive on CPU, but they can use good I/O in your storage. Given you only have 5-6 users, you're not going to stress the server much at all. So the CPU is strong enough for the database server powering Dynamics, and the I/O should be good enough to service both files & the database. I would recommend a storage array of 5-6 disks, preferably 15k SAS (10k would be fine as well). SSDs from the server vendors would probably be too expensive right now.

3) Create a 2nd physical host to run two other virtualized servers - Exchange and your Domain Controller. Exchange 2010 runs well virtualized as Microsoft engineered it to have less disk I/O. A domain controller is needed for your user authentication (also used by Dynamics), and it can run DHCP/DNS as well. A single virtual server would easily handle those roles as the DC, and another virtual server can host Exchange.

4) Get a UPS (either one big one or two separate ones for your servers) and some type of backup system. Backup is VERY important - don't neglect it!

5) Last part, but maybe the most important - get the help of a good IT consulting company. Let them know your budget so they don't go overkill. Try to find some local recommendations that other businesses have used. This company will likely be the one to set up everything; they'll also be the one to support you when things aren't going too good. Since you're running Dynamics, I would recommend looking for one who is a Microsoft Partner & has Dynamics experience. You could even have them run a cost-comparison between hosting everything yourself or going with a Office365-type of cloud solution.
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May 6, 2014 9:40:50 AM

2Be_or_Not2Be said:
3) Create a 2nd physical host to run two other virtualized servers - Exchange and your Domain Controller. Exchange 2010 runs well virtualized as Microsoft engineered it to have less disk I/O. A domain controller is needed for your user authentication (also used by Dynamics), and it can run DHCP/DNS as well. A single virtual server would easily handle those roles as the DC, and another virtual server can host Exchange.

4) Get a UPS (either one big one or two separate ones for your servers) and some type of backup system. Backup is VERY important - don't neglect it!


Thank you for the detailed response.

I have some follow-up questions.

1) I know this is kind of a silly point since I am only relying on a router for this but suppose I do employ two physical servers, would a single instance of DNS/DHCP be safely sufficient? Due to the small scale of our operations, I believe we can still tolerate about 1-2 hours of downtime but strictly no more than that.

2) Regarding backup, do you mean cloning images of the VMs as well as the data in both servers? If so, would this essentially mean a secondary means of storing data that can be used to restore the entire system (assuming no hardware failure). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was thinking of something along the lines of an NAS (e.g.: from Synology etc)

3) Lastly, would it be possible if I were to go ahead online with setting up of the first physical server (hosting virtualized Dynamics and Exchange) without the second physical server? I would rely on my router for DNS/DHCP and understand that I have to manually configure my computers one at a time. I might then use the NAS mentioned above to provide some form of central file storage.

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May 6, 2014 10:51:46 AM

Requient said:
2Be_or_Not2Be said:
3) Create a 2nd physical host to run two other virtualized servers - Exchange and your Domain Controller. Exchange 2010 runs well virtualized as Microsoft engineered it to have less disk I/O. A domain controller is needed for your user authentication (also used by Dynamics), and it can run DHCP/DNS as well. A single virtual server would easily handle those roles as the DC, and another virtual server can host Exchange.

4) Get a UPS (either one big one or two separate ones for your servers) and some type of backup system. Backup is VERY important - don't neglect it!


Thank you for the detailed response.

I have some follow-up questions.

1) I know this is kind of a silly point since I am only relying on a router for this but suppose I do employ two physical servers, would a single instance of DNS/DHCP be safely sufficient? Due to the small scale of our operations, I believe we can still tolerate about 1-2 hours of downtime but strictly no more than that.

2) Regarding backup, do you mean cloning images of the VMs as well as the data in both servers? If so, would this essentially mean a secondary means of storing data that can be used to restore the entire system (assuming no hardware failure). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was thinking of something along the lines of an NAS (e.g.: from Synology etc)

3) Lastly, would it be possible if I were to go ahead online with setting up of the first physical server (hosting virtualized Dynamics and Exchange) without the second physical server? I would rely on my router for DNS/DHCP and understand that I have to manually configure my computers one at a time. I might then use the NAS mentioned above to provide some form of central file storage.



1) DHCP/DNS have very low overhead. For your size, one source for DHCP/DNS is sufficient. For small operations, that can easily be handled by your firewall/router.

2) Backup - I mean that you should have backups of your data, first and foremost. That means you want to cover not only your main file storage, but you also want to have your mail backed up as well. After that is answered, then you could worry about backups/snapshots of VMs and the like. A NAS, like the Synology you mentioned, can store your onsite backups; however, you also should maintain offsite backups as well. If you bought two of the same NAS units, one could be your main file storage and your onsite backups; the 2nd could be used for offsite replication. That is one type of backup scenario; other setups could work for you as well.

3) With a good enough physical server host, you could run all 3 servers (Dynamics, Exchange, and a new domain controller) as virtual guests. I would just make sure it had a decent storage subsystem and a good RAID controller. To keep costs down, I would recommend that you use the local storage on the server itself. For your main file storage, the NAS can serve your 5-6 clients. Later on, if/when you want to add a 2nd server (as a backup or whatever), you could so pretty easily.

Note: Don't use a regular NAS as the storage for your virtual guests, though. Most of the smaller NAS units don't have decent enough throughput to handle larger demands. I personally would rather have the bigger NAS units with full Intel x86 CPUs (not Atom); they almost always have better performance than the lower-end units utilize ARM or Atom-based CPUs. For just file storage, it doesn't matter than much with only 5 clients; for larger networks, it makes more of a diference.

Edit: In regards to #2, there are several vendors that offer "bare-metal" recovery products. However, investigate that only when you have a backup solution in place. Backup Exec might be a good place to start as it has both (regular backup & bare-metal options). Sadly, at this time, they still don't have good Windows Server 2012 R2 support (yet).
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May 6, 2014 12:40:07 PM

unless i miss something.. why wont you use cloud hosted services for exchange , dynamics , file sharing services?
btw dynamics require sql server for db.
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May 7, 2014 2:36:51 AM

Cjar said:
unless i miss something.. why wont you use cloud hosted services for exchange , dynamics , file sharing services?
btw dynamics require sql server for db.


As far as I know, there's no cloud-based version of this where I am currently (Singapore). I saw that they have one for the U.S. Data-wise, we would be more comfortable if we had someone to deal with locally though they would definitely be much more expensive as well. We might consider hosted Exchange, which is why I asked above if we could deploy only the 1st physical server first.

@2Be:
Pardon me, just a little unclear here.
Please correct me if I got this wrong: A Domain Controller is required for an AD and is ideally on a separate host? Or is no such arrangement required and it is perfectly fine (or even the way it is supposed to be) for AD and DC to be together on the same host - whether virtual or not.

I ask this because in your suggestion, you had (Dynamics + File Server which I assume to be AD) on a physical host and (Exchange + DC) on another physical host. I then asked if it's possible to have only the first which you said it's possible but mentioned Dynamics, Exchange and DC, leaving file server out.
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May 7, 2014 8:30:45 AM

Requient said:

@2Be:
Pardon me, just a little unclear here.
Please correct me if I got this wrong: A Domain Controller is required for an AD and is ideally on a separate host? Or is no such arrangement required and it is perfectly fine (or even the way it is supposed to be) for AD and DC to be together on the same host - whether virtual or not.

I ask this because in your suggestion, you had (Dynamics + File Server which I assume to be AD) on a physical host and (Exchange + DC) on another physical host. I then asked if it's possible to have only the first which you said it's possible but mentioned Dynamics, Exchange and DC, leaving file server out.


Active Directory (AD) is simply Microsoft's technology for a systematic way to centrally store information about resources, whether that is a server, a user, etc. You can basically think of it as a phonebook with network resources. A Domain Controller (DC) serves as the host for storing that directory information. So if you switch from a simple workgroup type of network - where information is stored on each PC and a PC has to "ask" another PC to share resources - to a domain-based network, you need a Domain Controller to host AD and to authenticate users to it. The Domain Controller would be its own server; Microsoft doesn't recommend you run Exchange on it and the same for Dynamics, I think.

I segregated the virtual guests into separate servers. For one, it's better because if one server goes down, it only takes down whatever is running on it. From a management perspective, it also helps to isolate the services being provided as well as assists in troubleshooting.

So consider each server to be separate; however, you can virtualize each one. With your current user load (5-6 users), a single physical host could run all of the virtual servers together, given that it has a strong enough CPU, enough memory, and a strong storage subsystem. I do emphasize that you can get by with 1 physical server ONLY because you have a small user base. As your user base expands, you will also need to expand your physical servers at some point.

I left the file storage part to you - you could either run it off a NAS (each user could be connected to the NAS through a login script), or you could have another virtual server as the file "server". You could even have the DC serve as the file server if you gave it enough storage space & you set up a network share on it.

A final note: licensing has changed for Windows Server 2012 & virtual guests running on Hyper-V. One server running the standard Hyper-V role is only licensed for 2 virtual guests. If you bought the Datacenter Edition of Windows Server, you would be licensed for an unlimited amount of virtual guests, limited basically only by your server's hardware. There used to be an "Enterprise" version of Windows server that licensed 4 virtual guests. Sadly, it's no more. So you would have to buy another Windows Server license in order to be licensed for 3 virtual servers.
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