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VMFusion Question

^squirrel^

^squirrel^

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 4, 2006
651
1
England
Hi all,

Have a question regarding VM Fusion.

Our Windows 2000 Server is on it's last legs and to be honest we don't actually need it for much. Unfortunately our accounting database requires Windows to run, so i'm not blessed with many options.

As the hardware that runs our Win 2k server is getting out of date, my plan is up upgrade our current G5 Xserve to the New 8-core Xserve (enhancing the performance for our Mac platform) and to host our Windows 2000 Server via VMFusion.

So my question is..... is it possible to run 10.5 Server and run VMFusion with Windows 2000 Server SP4? (i see from the VM site that it requires SP4) Will PC users be able to connect to the domain via VMFusion?

Thanks for your time

Darren
 
I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work. You are putting all your eggs in one basket of course, but if you're a small office on a small budget technically it'll work.
 
I don't think I would virtualize a domain controller or database. That's asking for trouble. You should definitely read up on best practices on virtualization. One thing (depending on how large / how hard you hit this database) that you don't want to go virtualizing is a database. I work for a very large enterprise, and we toyed around with running SQL in a VM - not pretty. Things slowed down to a crawl. Also, domain controllers are funny things - I have no experience virtualizing them, but I'm sure I remembered reading about someone else's attempt.


The best advice - do some research. Make sure you test it thoroughly before you start relying on it. Maybe just make it a BDC before you demote the other domain controller, and point some clients at it to make sure it works out

Edit: because I was curious, I went and did some searching for you :)

From this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

• We recommend that you locate critical server roles on domain controllers that are installed directly on physical hardware. Critical server roles include the following:
• Global catalog servers
• Domain Name System (DNS) servers
• Operations master roles, also known as flexible single master operations (FSMO)
 
edesignuk said:
I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work. You are putting all your eggs in one basket of course, but if you're a small office on a small budget technically it'll work.
Click to expand...

We'll it's be in Mirror RAID, so if anything goes wrong i'll pop it into another server.

Like i say, it's not just for an awful lot.
 
mrwizardno2 said:
I don't think I would virtualize a domain controller or database. That's asking for trouble. You should definitely read up on best practices on virtualization. One thing (depending on how large / how hard you hit this database) that you don't want to go virtualizing is a database. I work for a very large enterprise, and we toyed around with running SQL in a VM - not pretty. Things slowed down to a crawl. Also, domain controllers are funny things - I have no experience virtualizing them, but I'm sure I remembered reading about someone else's attempt.


The best advice - do some research. Make sure you test it thoroughly before you start relying on it. Maybe just make it a BDC before you demote the other domain controller, and point some clients at it to make sure it works out

Edit: because I was curious, I went and did some searching for you :)

From this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

• We recommend that you locate critical server roles on domain controllers that are installed directly on physical hardware. Critical server roles include the following:
• Global catalog servers
• Domain Name System (DNS) servers
• Operations master roles, also known as flexible single master operations (FSMO)
Click to expand...

Thank you for looking into this for me.

We could probably get away with not using a domain and just use the OSX server.

With regards to the database, we will only have 3 people connecting to it. It's for our accounts department using Sage.

I would have thought, for such a small DB that this would be fine?
 
Redundancy or not, you still have all your eggs in one basket.

As I say, I'm sure you can do it and it will work, but as mrwizardno2 says, it's definitely a long way from ideal.
 
Quite possibly. Actually virtualizing the domain may even be okay in your case. If there are so few people using it, I doubt you would see much of an impact on performance. You just have to be careful to make sure you don't do any of the no-no's as stated by Microsoft in that last link

I'm so used to thinking in terms of large scale / heavy use. You could give it a shot - if it doesn't work out, you're not really out anything :D
 
mrwizardno2 said:
Quite possibly. Actually virtualizing the domain may even be okay in your case. If there are so few people using it, I doubt you would see much of an impact on performance. You just have to be careful to make sure you don't do any of the no-no's as stated by Microsoft in that last link

I'm so used to thinking in terms of large scale / heavy use. You could give it a shot - if it doesn't work out, you're not really out anything :D
Click to expand...

I think i'll try and run it from my laptop to see what kind of results i get. i will of course post back here with my findings.

Thank you all for your really fast comments.
 
I wouldnt recommend virtualizing your entire domain...no way. But for one box, running just that database I think you will ok. Just make sure it has enough memory allocated to it and you should be fine. I have three W2K8 VM's running on my MBP and one with Exchange to test everything and it runs, not beautifully but enough to test and play with all the new things..as long as you have a beefy machine it should run fine, but like everyone said, you start addiing more and more and more VM's you are putting your network in one basket, two drive failures, hardware failure etc you are screwed. Just something to think about...virtualization is great technology, but the hardware needs to get better...just my .02 cents...
 
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