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Hey all,
(tldr = skip to near bottom for storage question)
I'm a long time reader of [H], never really needed to post until now.
I'll try to make a real long story short. I work at a small business now, working with SMBs. For the past 12 years i've worked at different banks and a casino as one of the systems admins. Gone are the days of $78k IBM DS5020 installs. I need to pace myself with recommendations.. cause my boss has never installed a server setup worth more than $15k.
Hokay - We are setting up virtualization in a few local business'. The servers are existing and will be converted over.. previous companies installed some decent hardware - however they are terribly underused as single-use servers (etc).
I've already ported the existing images over to a test server, and playing with it at the shop on a test box.
We are implementing Xenserver in a small business environment. And my glorious boss (who.. knows nothing of virtualization, and is the "fly by the seat of his pants" type organization) tells me the shared storage portion will be a Synology Diskstation DS1511+. It's a cute little 5 bay NAS, to which we'll throw in 5x 1TB WD RE4's and RAID 6.
The "plan" is to install xenserver on a decent HP ML370 G6 (Xeon E5649 w/ 24GB ram) and connect the diskstation to the server via eSATA, via a decent PCIe expansion card, and have the users connect via the network connection. Hook it all into AD, and off to the races.
I kind of stared at him for a moment, and blinked a few times.. trying to determine if this was a good route to take or not. We already have a remote backup setup through VPN for the synology diskstations we have out in the field.. and am wondering if this is a good course of action - with respect to IOPS and general bandwidth.
The server tasks are pretty general.. AD, exchange, file server w/ folder redirection, simply accounting (well.. that's just file server stuff), sharepoint, remote workplace and Sage ACT! management software. Users in these business' range from 10-45, some are remote offices via fiber VPN.
Any thoughts or ideas with the setup? We have some older HP 4u servers I was going to throw more RAM in + 8-12 SAS drives and a few fiber channel network cards to connect to the Xenserver.. but that'll be more expensive of course..
TIA
(tldr = skip to near bottom for storage question)
I'm a long time reader of [H], never really needed to post until now.
I'll try to make a real long story short. I work at a small business now, working with SMBs. For the past 12 years i've worked at different banks and a casino as one of the systems admins. Gone are the days of $78k IBM DS5020 installs. I need to pace myself with recommendations.. cause my boss has never installed a server setup worth more than $15k.
Hokay - We are setting up virtualization in a few local business'. The servers are existing and will be converted over.. previous companies installed some decent hardware - however they are terribly underused as single-use servers (etc).
I've already ported the existing images over to a test server, and playing with it at the shop on a test box.
We are implementing Xenserver in a small business environment. And my glorious boss (who.. knows nothing of virtualization, and is the "fly by the seat of his pants" type organization) tells me the shared storage portion will be a Synology Diskstation DS1511+. It's a cute little 5 bay NAS, to which we'll throw in 5x 1TB WD RE4's and RAID 6.
The "plan" is to install xenserver on a decent HP ML370 G6 (Xeon E5649 w/ 24GB ram) and connect the diskstation to the server via eSATA, via a decent PCIe expansion card, and have the users connect via the network connection. Hook it all into AD, and off to the races.
I kind of stared at him for a moment, and blinked a few times.. trying to determine if this was a good route to take or not. We already have a remote backup setup through VPN for the synology diskstations we have out in the field.. and am wondering if this is a good course of action - with respect to IOPS and general bandwidth.
The server tasks are pretty general.. AD, exchange, file server w/ folder redirection, simply accounting (well.. that's just file server stuff), sharepoint, remote workplace and Sage ACT! management software. Users in these business' range from 10-45, some are remote offices via fiber VPN.
Any thoughts or ideas with the setup? We have some older HP 4u servers I was going to throw more RAM in + 8-12 SAS drives and a few fiber channel network cards to connect to the Xenserver.. but that'll be more expensive of course..
TIA