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OK - from what I gather, installing VMWare on a hardworking SBS 2011 server is a no-no. Is this the case even if the server is very lightly loaded? Three workstations, and stacked with 16GB RAM. Is it better if we load SBS 2011 as a guest VM? Would you guys trust this setup at a client site?

Small Business Server as a virtualization host is not supported. At all.

It can, however, be a guest.

JamesNT

Definitely wouldn't trust SBS 2011 Standard to run as host. Essentials might, but I wouldn't consider it in a production server. You could virtualize your existing instance and load something like Hyper V Core or ESXi as the base and reload it back.

I'm running SBS 2011 Standard as a guest on my Windows 8 Pro (with VMWare Workstation 9, Class 2) now with 17GB of RAM. However, I would recommend a class 1 HyperVisor (Hyper V/ESXi) for a production server. My system is usually on 24/7/365. People often recommend against class 2 since it wastes resources and increases the potential attack vectors.

Class 1 = an operating environment that's specifically geared toward hosting VM's?
Class 2 = a consumer grade OS that does double duty?

Do I have that right?

As an aside, does anyone else feel like the DRAM prices are due to creep up from these levels?

I stocked up on some ECC RAM today. It seems that ECC stuff is more sensitive to price fluctuations.

Is ESXi something that you have to pay for?

Yep. Basically serves no other purpose than that. Very limited attack vectors often not possible without physical access. Windows 8 has Hyper V client built in too which is nice. I haven't used it extensively as all my VMs are currently in Workstation. You can only have one.

ECC RAM is pretty cheap nowadays. Usually like $20-30 more than the non ECC version. I got 64GB and it appears to be the same price. I don't think there's any price increase right now. There may be a difference between ECC Registered and ECC Unbuffered. The latter is uncommon and manufacturers like to charge extra.

ESXi is free. To manage it, you will need the vSphere client which is also free.

HyperV is also free. It uses RSAT (aka Hyper V tools) to manage the guest VMs which is also free.

Great for small business. I lean towards Hyper V due to the cheap price of backup solutions like backup assist.

So here is the VM environment I've been building out (but haven't put into production):

I'm installing Windows 7 x64 as the HOST OS. To be fair, I haven't played with Microsoft Hyper V much - I've fallen in love with VMWare Workstation 9. It's literally given me almost *no* grief, regardless of the configuration. From there, I run SBS 2011 Essentials as a guest, along with a couple of Windows 7 VM's - also as guests.

Let's say I deploy something like this as a "Test" AC machine at a small office. Since this is a testbed, I don't want to mess with their servers, routers and port forwarding, etc. I just let the people RDP into the Win 7 guest VM's take AC for a spin.

Now here's where it gets a little fuzzy. I've been loading either LogMeIn or Teamviewer on the HOST Win 7 OS, so that I can log in and control everything: HOST and GUEST machines. I understand that using Windows 7 as the HOST OS is not the best practice: bigger footprint, attack vector, etc. So I'm trying to find a solution whereby I can load the guest VM's on a Hypervisor like ESXi or Microsoft Hyper V. Problem is, without messing with their routers, etc, I don't know how to log into these Hypervisors and have control of all the machines. Is there an equivalently simple way (like LogMeIn or Teamviewer) to do this w/o messing with their infrastructure?

I'm confused about why you need to mess with the router settings.

Anywho let's see if we can clarify this. When you install ESXi on a machine, that's pretty much the last time you'll use it. You can't actually walk up and use a keyboard/mouse on the ESXi machine. Instead, it uses something called vSphere client which is basically like TeamViewer for ESXi. You type in the IP Address of your ESXi Server and it brings up a series of options which are pretty similar to that of VMWare workstation. So think of vSphere as your new workstation. You should try installing ESXi on an old computer and playing around with it and vSphere.

You shouldn't need to use TeamViewer to access the host computer. You can instead RDP into the guests. VMWare can replicate physical network connection. So it's like the computer is on your network. So then you can RDP into that specific Windows 7 Guest or join it to the domain so it shows up in the remote web access console.

In fact, it's not uncommon for people to install ESXi on flash drives or SD Cards and have several copies lying around in case of a failure. Makes it easy to move things around as well.

Another piece of advice would be to make sure you establish the backup plan before you set up everything. Snapshots are great, but they way in which they work may not always be conducive to something like Exchange. Even MS says that snapshotting a server running AD services isn't supported. Make sure you are doing image level and FILE level backups.

That's why I tend to lean towards Hyper V in SMB. The backup solutions tend to be on the cheap side compared to VMWare. Hyper V can do a VSS Backup of Each machine using it's built in server backup. For enterprise with large budgets, I'd go for ESX

Thanks. ESXi and VSphere sound like they are what I'm looking for. The reason I've been using something(s) like Teamviewer is because of the zero-config setup.

When you say "You type in the IP Address of your ESXi Server", that's assuming that the client has a static IP, correct? And with stuff like Remote Web Access and RDP, you have to get into the router to allow port forwarding, etc. That's what I'm trying to avoid. Essentially, if the client says, "Not quite what we're looking for...", I'd like to be able to walk in, take a box back, and be done with it.

This leads me to another question, lol.

What program do you use to clone/backup server disks. For example, I'd like to be able to clone the HD before actual deployment of a Server or Workstation. I've generally been happy with Acronis, but if you try to clone a Server HD, it says, "Nope, cough up for the "Server" version."

I've been toying with Clonezilla - I'm assumeing it's OS agnostic. Have you tried it?

Are we talking about Virtual Disks or Physical Disks. I wouldn't recommend taking a disc image of a hard drive with Virtual Discs. A simple copy/paste of a virtual disk would suffice. They are very easy to move between computers.

The thing about OS Agnostic ones is that they require the machine to be shutdown. They basically take a sector-by-sector image of the hard drive. The ones that Acronis and Macrium sell runs while the computer is on using their own VSS writers or the built in one on Windows. So it's not really an alternative to backing up a server. Almost all of them charge more to backup a server. I use the Windows Server Backup tool. I've been able to successfully the restore the image to a bare metal on a few occasions.

Physical Disks. I was thinking that in the case of no RAID (unwise, i know), the quickest way to get a Server back up on its feet is to pop in a drive that I had cloned earlier (sector by sector). This is assuming, of course, that the data was being backed up, and there hadn't been wholesale changes along the way.

I haven't practiced a lot of other disaster recovery methods yet on Windows Servers. I'm assuming that you pop in some kind of DVD, point it to the location of the backup, and have it restore to the new HD - much like Acronis?

That's the same way Windows Server Backup Restore works. They give you a couple options, e.g. full image restore, windows restore, file restore.

With Virtualization, it's pretty simple. Regardless of the server failure, drive, mobo, RAM, etc. Just move it to a secondary computer. That's my main reason for doing virtualization nowadays. Usually I get a nice server and the owner a nice beefed up desktop (i7/16GB RAM/SSD, etc.) or something so he can restore the VM to his computer while I figure out what's wrong with the server. Could be 30 mins to an hour till he's back up (depends on the speed of the backup drive. HINT: Use USB 3.0/eSATA!), but I would have a good amount of time to get down there if I needed/figure out the issue.

Right now I'm exploring Hyper V and the new Hyper V client built into Windows 8. Makes a nice alternative to the ESXi/VMWare Player combo. Would make things pretty simple.

Yup - that's the same model I had in mind as well. A good server, along with a good workstation that holds a Windows Home Server 2011 virtual machine in case of emergency (with AC already loaded).

If something happens to the main Server:

- Restore AC backup to the VM WHS machine.
- Point the workstations to the AC database on the WHS virtual machine.
- Calmly fix/replace the Server, with the emphasis on *calmly*.

I usually run other apps on the server like Exchange or SharePoint or something else. That's when it's useful. If AC is the only thing you need to get operational then you could probably just install the full AC on your desktop as well.