My organization is researching entering into the world of server virtualization. I am needing to plan the number of virtual servers and which services should be ran on each in order to guide our hardware purchases.
Currently, we have the following servers running the indicated services:
- Primary DC / AD / DNS / Print Server / File Server / Applications
- Secondary DC / AD / DNS / File Server / Mail Server
- DHCP / WDS
- WSUS
- ISA / Mail Archive
- Backup / Database
- Web Server
We currently have 400 computers (100 teacher machines and 300 student machines).
For our hardware, we are considering using two servers connected to a storage device (iSCSI) and running most of the services listed previously in a virtual environment. The thought is certainly many of these services can be combined onto a single virtual server instance and will not need to be a separate virtual server. The problem is given our network size and the fact we are a public school (where rarely will more than half of the computer be in use at any given time):
- How many virtual servers are necessary?
- Which services should be ran together/apart from each other?
Thanks in advance!
aboell