hey peeps,

some of you may have spotted i was hunting down servers a few weeks back, well i finally got some. i noticed some of you work in this area and would be grateful if you would help me configure them.

i know your probs going wtf does he want servers for if he cannot configure them, well fact of the matter is i learn better by being show what to do rather than reading if that makes sense.

any way atm i have 2 dell poweredge 860 II, with 3 more coming in the next few weeks.

also im looking to learn in all areas of server manage ment:

active directory

dns

domain servers(new forest and adding to existing)

file servers

mail servers (exchange)

basically every aspect of running servers

TYIA

/Phil

p.s

i need a rack switch ups and decent server router if any 1 has any XD

Are you planing on installing a virtualisation layer on them to make life easier down the road?

i.e. you can snapshot them before config / chapter changes, rollback if no good etc.

if your refering to RIS/WDS then yes very much so

Is that like a pxe boot thing in MS speak? I'm not really an MS servers chap, was around 2000, briefly eek.

I was thinking of vmware, or xen. Get more bang for buck out of each box, play with different lab setups etc.

yea wds/ris is a pxe thing, but youve lost me now XD, see this is where i need guidance so i can try and grab a understanding in all aspects of ms servers

What processors are you getting with them? That server I think was sold in a crossover period so some of the original processors the machine was sold with did not support VT-x so wouldn't be much use for a virtual OS.

Phil - If I understand Colin correctly, he is asking whether you are going to install Windows direct to the drives or install a host OS for virtualisation and the install your Windows servers as virtual servers within that host OS. It's a setup I would recommend as well as this is the way a lot of servers are now going anyway as it allows you to run a variety of different servers all on the one piece of hardware and also gives you lot of options to play with as you can easily clone them for development installs and even have failover capability to another machine.

John

Well virtualisation sits below servers, bah I can explain that better.

Take physical hardware your poweredge box. It's a physical server. Using tools like vmware or xen (pros cons later) you effectively install a layer on top of your phyiscal box.

It is onto this layer you install your 'MS servers'. So for example one server can have many servers inside it, virtually. The vmware/xen layer virtualises the hardware, so the guest OS see's a cpu, one or 4 or 8, you decide, you slice your phy server into smaller chunks.

It might seem like another component in the puzzle, but it can be quite easy and certainly as you're learning, a god send when you blow a config / setup away.

So virtualisation allows; amongst many thing, to take a copy of your server as it's running, a snapshot. You make you config change, test...

oh snap it's fubar, right click in vmconsole, rollback.

oh woot it's working, right click in vmconsole, snapshot, next change.

This is only one aspect. Creating complex networking, or vnets etc all come into effect, even testing of storage, can simulate network sotrage by running a network storage server on the phy server.

As to costs, both vmware and xen can be free, I'm using vmware on a live server now, will be replacing it for xen cloud when the chance appears.

Vmware to get started is possibly the best bet, to make use of the fancy features costs, but if you get to that point, you'll have found a sponsor for them, or understand the need and be able to switch to xen easily.

https://www.vmware.com/uk/virtualization/virtualization-basics/what-is-virtualization.html

ESXi I think is still free, maybe a register to access hoop.

What processors are you getting with them? That server I think was sold in a crossover period so some of the original processors the machine was sold with did not support VT-x so wouldn't be much use for a virtual OS.

Good point. ignore me in that case

There are VT-x compatible processors that will fit those servers to it may well be an option particularly if they're later models.

John

Edited 24 February, 201313 yr by JohnMcL7

they are pentium D i think

this is the specs, i know ram is on the low side defo for virtual servers, so ill look into getting more for that say 8gb or summit per server only issue is that ram is pricey :(

I would recommend installing Windows Server and start adding each of the roles, they are quite easy to wing for a beginner and will give you a better understanding of it all. Have a client you can add to your domain and manage and then start playing about with it all. If you're looking towards Windows more then WSUS would be worth looking into also.

I would recommend installing Windows Server and start adding each of the roles, they are quite easy to wing for a beginner and will give you a better understanding of it all. Have a client you can add to your domain and manage and then start playing about with it all. If you're looking towards Windows more then WSUS would be worth looking into also.

ill look into that ty

Just take a Windows Image once you install so you can restore if anything goes wrong and you should be good