This eBook attempts to provide you, a decision-maker in a school, college or university, with the information you need to make informed decisions about how to save money within your institution. One of the solutions, and the key focus of this eBook, lies in server virtualisation using Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. Within this eBook, we’ll tell you what Hyper-V is already doing for real UK schools, and arguably more importantly, in broad terms what it could do for your school.
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
1. educationVirtualisation withMicrosoft Hyper-V
2. Virtualisation with Contents Microsoft Hyper-V the microsoft
visual identity INTRODUCTION
................................................................................................................
3 PART ONE - AN OVERVIEW TO VIRTUALISATION
........................................... 4 The story starts with
a room full of metal
.............................................................................
5 Bringing virtualisation within reach
.......................................................................................
6 Should we get on and do it?
...................................................................................................
7 PART TWO - VIRTUALISATION IN PRACTICE
..................................................... 8 Server
virtualisation at West Hatch High School, by Alan Richards
................................... 9 Starting out
...............................................................................................................................
11 The Microsoft Brand Guidelines for Education | Brand Guidelines
for Education | 27 The Microsoft 27 Do the groundwork
.................................................................................................................
12 Deciding on a virtualisation scenario
.....................................................................................
13 Deciding on your technology
.................................................................................................
14 Deciding on hardware
.............................................................................................................
15 Th Deciding on hardware storage
............................................................................................
17 Installation
................................................................................................................................
19 Management
............................................................................................................................
21 Conclusions
...............................................................................................................................
22 Useful links
................................................................................................................................
The Microsoft Brand Guidelines for Education | 27 232 Contents
education
3. Virtualisation with Introduction Microsoft Hyper-V Were
conditioned to assume, especially in education, that a cost-saving
measure will threaten the quality of what were able to offer. That
being so, the news is more than welcome that in many schools,
colleges and universities, information technology professionals are
turning that assumption on its head. They have found a proven way
not only of saving significant sums of money for their
institutions, but of doing so while delivering better and more
effective ICT for staff and students. Already the questions are
forming. How is that done? Can any school do it? this eBook, lies
in server virtualisation using Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Exactly what cost savings are in the offing? Is the end product
really good R2 with Hyper-V. enough for us? Within this eBook, well
tell you what Hyper-V is already doing for real UK This eBook
attempts to provide you, a decision-maker in a school, college or
schools, and arguably more importantly, in broad terms what it
could do university, with the information you need to make informed
decisions about how for your school. to save money within your
institution. One of the solutions, and the key focus of The content
covered within this eBook is structured in two parts. Part One Part
Two Part One is a general, non-technical introduction to the
concept of Part Two is required reading for the IT decision makers.
Its a more technical, server virtualisation what it is; what it can
do for you etc. but still very readable, guide through the process
of planning, installing and running a virtualised environment in a
real school. For this second part were indebted to Alan Richards,
Information Systems Manager at West Hatch High School in Chigwell,
Essex. Alan is in demand as a generous and expert source of
information about the application of technology to education. He
carries the coveted Microsoft accolade of Most Valued
Professional.3 Introduction education
4. Virtualisation withPart One - An overview to virtualisation
Microsoft Hyper-V Fail to prepare prepare to fail. education
5. Virtualisation with The story starts with a room full of
metal Microsoft Hyper-V How many servers live in your schools
server The difference between 4 and 20 room? A survey in 2010 by
the educational ICT Forum, www.EduGeek.net, showed that an average
So whats happening here? The answer is that the secondary school
then had about 12 servers. school with four servers has used
virtualisation technology. That means replacing many of the Like so
many averages, though, the mean figure original physical servers
with virtual servers, which actually hides a very wide spread. For
example, one exist as software rather than as separate metal school
in the survey, of 1020 students, reports 4 boxes. These virtual
servers are collected together servers. Another, with 1200
students, has 20 servers. into clusters, and each cluster lives in
a powerful Well come to that difference and the reasons for it,
physical server. in a moment. Meanwhile, just consider that its In
fact in the EduGeek survey, the school of 1020 obviously cheaper to
buy and run 4 servers, than 20. students with 4 servers adds the
comment, 4 physical A lot cheaper in fact, as well see when we look
at servers run 35 virtual servers. some figures. Each server, after
all, uses electricity, has to be maintained, takes up space, and
will need You can see that even if each new host server is more
replacing every few years. powerful and more expensive, its always
going to be a lot cheaper to buy and run 4 rather than 20 or more.
Of course, it doesnt have to be 35 into 4. The survey shows a
number of solutions: 16 into 10, for example in another secondary,
and 9 into 4 in a primary school. Exactly how to do virtualisation
is a decision is for each school to make, but its interesting that
at the time of the survey, of 24 secondary schools, 12 were using
or intending to use it to some degree. By now, therell undoubtedly
be more. Its always going to be a lot cheaper to buy and run 4
servers rather than 20 or more.5 An overview to virtualisation
education
6. Virtualisation with Bringing virtualisation within reach
Microsoft Hyper-V The arrival in 2009 of Microsoft Windows Server
that, at the very least, a virtualisation project will pay early
adopters of Microsofts virtualisation solution, 2008 R2 with
Hyper-V was a game changer for for itself quite quickly. the highly
experienced Alan Richards of West Hatch schools. This release of
Windows Server included High School, ran a year-long small-scale
test before virtualisation built-in, for free. It means that if
With the project successfully implemented, it will he was
convinced. Indeed Alan, as youll see in his youre already using
Microsoft technology, you continue, year on year, to make a real
impact on excellent major contribution to this eBook, still can
work within that without adding a new layer the whole-school
budget. To give just one specific recommends a test project. Not so
much to make of infrastructure and training. As Microsoft puts it,
example, Steve Gillott, Head of ICT at Wootton Bassett sure the
basic technology works, but to be certain If you know Windows, you
know virtualisation. School in Wiltshire, describes reducing his
schools of exactly whats needed for the particular school. servers
from 13 to 3. Now, all the doubts about functionality and
reliability It came to a point where we needed to replace the have
gone away. From its launch in 2009, Microsofts The cost savings
hardware anyway, so money was earmarked for that. Windows Server
2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology, Just how much could be potentially
saved? After seeing a demonstration of Hyper-V by Microsoft has
been proving just how efficient and cost effective At Microsoft
weve recorded one or two striking Partner Clarity-IT Solutions
(www.clarityit.co.uk) we it can be. Plan properly and carefully,
follow the key examples. Servers typically cost 3000 each to
replace, decided that the additional benefits of virtualising our
principles, take the right advice, and what you end up server
infrastructure was a much better investment with is a virtualised
environment thats better than the for example, often on a rolling
annual programme. than buying replacement servers. The cost savings
in system you had before easier to manage and easier We talked to
three schools about this. Two were the first year alone paid for
the virtualisation project. to change as your schools needs change,
and users reducing from 20 servers to 5, the other from 20 to 6.
arent subjected to irritating down time. All three separately
calculated annual savings of about It was a decision that saved the
school over 38,000 in that first year and continues to save 14,500
a year on For Alan Richards at West Hatch its that improved 7,000 a
year in hardware replacement costs alone. electricity and support
contracts. service that really counts. By the same token, many
schools will significantly reduce the cost of contracted IT
support. Its obviously nice to save money, but the main reason for
the change is to ensure reliability and sustainability On top of
this there are energy savings, because But does it work? for the
school. not only do fewer servers use less electricity, but they
also cost less to keep cool. Again, the schools School network
managers were originally cautious Alans right, but its also true
that by moving in tell similar stories, of annual energy savings in
the about virtualisation. The cost savings looked attractive, a
planned way to a virtualised environment with region of 8,000 to
10,000 good for the schools but there was a gut feeling that by
abandoning Hyper-V, the network team is effectively presenting
environmental impact as well as the budget. Do some the notion of
one separate server box for each key the school with a considerable
financial bonus that simple math, come up with a global sum, and it
seems function, you were doing something risky. One of the
continues year on year. It was a decision that saved the school
over 38,000 in that first year.6 An overview to virtualisation
education
7. Virtualisation with Should we get on and do it? Microsoft
Hyper-V Planning is the key. That, in turn means learning Decide
which brand of technology youre going from those whove done it,
reading the literature, for. Clearly we believe Microsoft Hyper-V
will be comparing supplier costs, consulting partners and the right
choice, and were confident that careful probably being prepared to
run a trial. research into total costs and ease of installation and
day to day management will bear us out. Keep on planning. Its not
just a matter of planning at the outset. Whoever runs this project
will need Make the best licensing decision. The right decision to
keep ahead of the process, always planning the pays off handsomely.
Alan has a table of guidance next move, and being ready for the
unexpected. on this. Each step affects the next one, so a wrong
move Decide exactly what hardware youre going to at one stage can
reverberate through the whole order number of servers, to what
specification. project. As Alan says, Again, Alan takes you through
the factors governing your choice. Fail to prepare prepare to fail.
All of this is achievable, and well within the Know your starting
point. Record whats already capacity of effective school and
network in place, what it does, monitor and measure how leadership.
Remember there are people out there much work each part of your
system is contributing to help others whove made the journey,
partner to the whole. suppliers and, of course, the professionals
at As Alan Richards says in his section of this Microsoft.
Achieving the kind of results seen by Decide how many, and which
servers to virtualise. eBook, only you know the answer to that.
people like Alan Richards, Steve Gillott and many This is a key
decision. Alan covers the issues involved. What you should do,
though, is find out what others brings the satisfaction of having
made a it could mean for your school or college, whats Find the
right set-up or scenario, bearing in mind the considerable
contribution to the life of a school involved in making the change
and what the need to cover for failures and for future expansion.
and its young people. benefits will be. Thats why weve included
Alans very comprehensive description of the journey into
virtualisation for a typical school. Make no mistake, the full
account is required reading, probably best digested by the leader
of the schools network team. Here, though, are Alans Clearly we
believe Microsoft Hyper-V will be the right choice. key points.7 An
overview to virtualisation education
8. Virtualisation withPart Two - Virtualisation in practice
Microsoft Hyper-V You need to have an eye on the future.
education
9. Virtualisation with Server virtualisation at West Hatch High
School, by Alan Richards Microsoft Hyper-V West Hatch High School
in Chigwell, Essex, Overview them on to one large host to share
resources. is a specialist business, enterprise and I was sure this
would reduce server functionality and humanities college with 1300
students. Starting in 2008, the schools leadership, on my
responsiveness, especially in the case of file servers, The school
is committed to the extensive use advice, embarked on a review of
our IT systems. which in any educational environment are most of
ICT for learning and management and at The first step was to make a
major investment in heavily used. the heart of all operations lays
an efficient, bringing the network infrastructure up to date. We
then decided to build on that foundation and At the same time the
cost saving possibilities reliable and very cost-effective
virtualised seek cost savings through the effective use of ICT. had
to be considered, and after reading many server environment
achieved through the The aim was to reduce our total cost of
ownership articles we took the decision to run a virtualised use of
Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V. while at the same time
maintaining and improving test environment. We put our sever
replacement our support for the core of our business, which is
programme on hold for a year apart from 4 servers educating our
students. that were no longer up to the job. We bought a high
specification server and the 4 servers that required At the time of
the review, towards the end of 2009, replacement were transferred
as virtual servers to we were about to embark on a programme of
this new host. This test was then run for a year with server
replacement, and it made sense to consider constant monitoring of
all the key elements: whether this was an area where we could make
long term savings. Disk usage Network utilisation Thinking about
virtualisation CPU load When we started our review, virtualisation
was End user experience in its infancy, with Microsoft just
starting to make inroads into the market. At that point I, like
many The results of the year long test were reassuring, other IT
professionals, was sceptical about server and cleared away our
doubts about functionality virtualisation. and reliability. I could
not see any benefit to my users from taking services that ran on
physical servers and putting9 Virtualisation in practice
education
10. Virtualisation with Server virtualisation at West Hatch
High School, by Alan Richards Microsoft Hyper-V Where we are now
Reaping the benefits How did we do it? Fully reassured by our test
experience, and by Virtualisation means we have 15 fewer servers to
This eBook draws on our experience at West Hatch considerable
research, we decided to move to keep cool, to maintain and
ultimately to replace. High School, together with all that I and my
team our current fully virtualised environment using We calculate
the cost savings of this are of the have learned from colleagues
across the country Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V. As a result
order of 12,000 each year. This means that the and not least from
Microsoft. Its intended to guide we now have 9 physical servers
where there were 24. virtualisation project pays for itself in
three years, the reader through each stage of planning and which
has also been the experience in other schools implementing a
virtualisation project. It cant tell we know of. you in detail how
to solve the issues in your own school. What it will do, though, is
identify what At the same time we have gained an efficient, easy
those issues are likely to be, and give some pointers to maintain
system which is proving itself in use with to how they might be
tackled. little or no planned, or unplanned, downtime. We calculate
the cost savings of this are of the order of 12,000 each year.10
Virtualisation in practice education
11. Virtualisation with Starting out Microsoft Hyper-V Fail to
prepare prepare to fail. network and how your infrastructure can
cope with the demands of virtualisation. Thats very much the
mindset thats needed by an organisation embarking on server How you
run the trial will depend on the virtualisation. information you
want to discover, and to a certain extent, how much money you want
to spend on The planning phase is vital and demands serious the
hardware. attention. It cant he overlooked, hurried or entered into
lightly. Information technology is core to any business from high
street banks to the smallest The purpose of your trial of primary
schools. Should it fail, or is not fit for purpose, then the
business could fail. In a school or A simple trial would consist of
a single server with college that means failing the very people we
are all enough on board storage to cope with 3 or 4 virtual here
for the students. servers, and network connectivity to service the
virtual servers. This type of test will allow you to monitor the
loads on your network infrastructure, the actual network cards on
the servers, and also Should you run a trial? allow you to monitor
the end user experience. Part of being meticulous about planning
means If you have already decided on virtualisation and you should
think about running a trial ahead of full your trial is going to be
used to simply collect data implementation. to help in the planning
and installation phases, At West Hatch High School we ran a year
long trial. then you could go for a trial setup with a single
Virtualisation was still quite new to schools and I server and the
storage system of your choice. believed it had to prove its worth.
This setup will allow you to collect all the required data but also
make the transition to a full virtualised The trial will make
Virtualisation is now much more proven. So you may be happy to miss
out the trial, and settle for environment a lot easier. the
transition to a full researching what other people have done, and
Whichever method of trial you decide on, the data pulling together
all of the information available in collected will never go to
waste as it can be used to virtualised environment a lot easier.
blogs, white papers and videos. I believe, though, inform your
decision making throughout the process that a trials still
advisable. It may well save time and of virtualisation. trouble
later on by providing details about your11 Virtualisation in
practice education
12. Virtualisation with Do the groundwork Microsoft Hyper-V
Know your starting point What to virtualise The general point were
making here, though, is that you need to weigh up carefully all the
issues around Do the groundwork. Begin by finding out what whats A
major question you will have to ask yourself what services you
might virtualise. already in place and how it is being used. Before
you is what services you are going to virtualise. can plan for how
many virtual hosts, you need you Theoretically you can virtualise
any server, Other considerations that might arise include: need to
know what servers you are going to virtualise Windows based or not.
But just how far you go and the load that they are under currently.
The load whether you should virtualise everything, for Physical
connection. For example there is no on servers is an important
factor in deciding on your example, simply because you can is a
question way to connect to external SCSI connections virtualisation
strategy. For instance, it would not be that has produced some very
heated debates in in Hyper-V, such as tape drives. advisable to
place all your memory-hungry servers the IT community. on the same
virtual host. Security, both physical and logical (is it, for Take,
for example, Active Directory, one of the example, a company
requirement to have core services in any Windows based domain. At
its your root certificate authority server locked Finding out what
you have can include: most basic level, it provides the logon
functionality away somewhere secure?) for users to access computers
and therefore their A simple list of servers network accounts. If
this service fails, the network Disk utilisation monitoring is
fundamentally compromised, so one argument Microsoft Assessment
Network monitoring tools to map out the says that by virtualising
it you are providing a level network load and utilisation of fault
tolerance because it isnt a physical server. & Planning Toolkit
However, the downside here is to consider what While there is no
substitute for knowing your CPU load happens if youre virtual hosts
are members of the network there is a tool provided by Microsoft
that domain and your virtualised domain controller will make life
slightly easier for you. The Microsoft All of these factors will
help you to answer some of fails. How do you log into your host if
it requires Assessment & Planning (MAP) toolkit will look at
the key questions, which can include: a domain account to login?
your current servers and provide you with suggested setups for your
virtualised environment. Obviously this is an extreme case, and
there are How many virtual hosts do I need ways around it. As a
rule it is best practice to keep But dont take the solutions it
comes up with as What size storage should I purchase at least one
physical domain controller to provide definitive answers. Regard
them as helpful starting What type of storage (iSCSI, fibre channel
etc.) active directory functionality. You can then have as points
for your own planning. many virtualised domain controllers as you
like for fault tolerance. You can download the tool from the
following Having full and accurate answers to these questions
location: www.microsoft.com/download/en/ will be decisive in
determining how well your details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=7826.
virtualised environment performs.12 Virtualisation in practice
education
13. Virtualisation with Deciding on a virtualisation scenario
Microsoft Hyper-V Now we have completed our planning step, While
this would work and be relatively low cost to So how is this
scenario so much better than our lets look at a typical small scale
scenario. implement it does fall down in a two key areas: first
one? Imagine you are a school with only 4 servers, one of Future
Growth As your needs for more Future Growth While initially this
scenario which is your Active Directory server, maybe a setup
servers may increase it will put more strain may seem like overkill
what it does allow you like the one below. on the resources of this
single host and to do is grow your environment as your needs
ultimately this may have a detrimental effect change, without
buying more equipment or on your end user experience. completely
changing your setup. Redundancy If your host fails then all of
Redundancy Because all the virtual hard Th Mail Server Intranet
Server File Server AD Server your virtual servers will fail as well
as all the drives are stored on a central storage system virtual
hard drives are stored on your single the failure of one host will
not affect the server. You can imagine the effect of this. running
of your virtual servers. Failover For this scenario you could quite
easily use one clustering will take care of the transfer of server
for your virtualisation host with lots of disk services between
hosts automatically and space and end up reducing your servers from
4 to A better solution is shown below. This one your users
experience will not be affected. 2 as shown below. gives you
redundancy and the ability to grow your virtualisation environment
in line with increasing needs. Virtualisation Host AD Server
Virtualisation Host Virtualisation Host AD Server VHD Storage This
scenario allows you to grow your environment as your needs
change.13 Virtualisation in practice education
14. Virtualisation with Deciding on your technology Microsoft
Hyper-V Youve done the planning, answered the key Licensing and
your on-going costs. Of course with VMware, questions, and settled
on the structure of your as well as paying for the actual software
theres no new virtualised environment. Licensing can be expensive,
Microsoft has taken provision for included Windows licences and so
you steps to reduce the licensing burden on Schools will have to
license every copy of Windows you install, The next question is
which virtualisation technology by introducing the new Enrolment
for Education whether it is physical or virtual. you are going to
choose and install. There are a Solutions licensing scheme but when
undertaking number of players in the market but the two key
virtualisation you need to consider how you are going The general
point here is that you need to spend time ones in education are: to
license both your hosts and your virtual servers. fully researching
the costs involved in each of the virtualisation solutions you
consider. VMware Your hosts will need a version of Windows Server
2008 R2 installed to run Hyper-V, which version Microsoft Hyper-V
you install can have a dramatic effect on how you Familiarity
license your virtual servers. The table below illustrates a typical
large School and how the version of An institution which uses
Microsoft technologies Either product will fulfill your needs when
it comes to Windows installed on the hosts affects their licensing
will find that the installation, development and virtualising your
servers. However, there are two key factors to consider before
deciding between them. requirements. management of Hyper-V involves
the use and deployment of familiar tools and interfaces. This
Number Windows Version Included VM VMs Licenses makes for
substantial savings of time and therefore Cost of Hosts Installed
on Host Licenses Installed Purchased costs in the areas of
training, management and by School leadership. If VMware is chosen,
the extra demands on VMware naturally comes at a cost, and it isnt
cheap. 5 Standard 1 30 (6 per host) 30 training and the development
of skills and knowledge If youre already a Microsoft establishment,
however, will need to be taken into account. with a Windows
environment, youll find that 5 Enterprise 4 30 (6 per host) 15
Microsoft Hyper-V is built into versions of Windows 5 Datacentre
Unlimited 30 (6 per host) 5 Server at no extra cost of licensing.
Consistency There is also a free standalone version of Hyper-V As
you can see paying a little bit extra for the We believe, based on
customer feedback, that Server 2008 R2 which can be downloaded
using the Datacentre version of Windows Server can help Microsoft
technologies perform best with Hyper-V. link below. This version is
purely for use as a Hyper-V server and does not have the same
management GUI save you money by reducing the number of server So
if youre virtualising, for example, SharePoint, as the Hyper-V
version in Windows Server 2008 R2. licenses you have to purchase.
This may not fit Exchange, SQL and other Microsoft technologies,
for every implementation but for large Hyper-V we strongly believe
that Hyper-V offers the better www.microsoft.com/download/en/
implementations, licensing can play a huge part in performance
option. details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3512 both making the
decision on technology provider14 Virtualisation in practice
education
15. Virtualisation with Deciding on hardware Microsoft Hyper-V
Weve now covered a lot of ground, doing basic Number of virtual
servers preparation, setting out a suitable virtualisation
scenario, and considering the issues around As we saw in the
virtualisation scenario, the number choosing a technology provider.
Now we of virtual servers you plan on hosting can have a come to
the final step which is to choose large effect on your hardware
decisions. If you only your hardware. This means working out how
ever plan on hosting a small number of servers many host servers
you will need to buy, and then you may very well get away with just
one to what specification. The factors governing virtualisation
host, but remember that this will not this decision include give
you any redundancy if your host dies, or any room for growth.
Number of virtual servers If you plan on hosting a large number of
virtual Network bandwidth required servers, then this will force
you down certain paths about the number of hosts and the storage of
the Memory requirements of virtual servers virtual hard drives. CPU
requirements of virtual servers Storage Network bandwidth required
When you are designing your host servers then All these will have
an impact on your virtualisation the network resources required by
each virtual design and purchasing so lets look at each one in
server will have an impact on the number of more detail. network
interface cards (NIC) that you will have built into the host
server. You need to consider that if you host 5 servers on a host
and only have 1 NIC then all data traffic will be going down that
one network card. This may have a detrimental effect on your users
experience. Later, well discuss the setting up of the management
side of virtualisation, which will take up at least one NIC for
management traffic across the network.15 Virtualisation in practice
education
16. Virtualisation with Deciding on hardware Microsoft Hyper-V
Memory requirements That seems simple, and to some extent it is.
But as well see later, if you are planning for redundancy, The
amount of available memory has a massive then that minimum is not
enough. Instead, you will effect on how any computer performs. This
is need to allow enough total memory on your host no different in
servers and in some ways it is servers to cope with the failure of
1 or 2 of them, more important. When designing the memory and the
consequent failover of the virtual servers requirements for your
host servers you will need installed on them to the remaining
hosts. to consider both the memory requirements for the host server
and also for all of the virtual servers. In Hyper-V this is called
failover clustering and is the best way to ensure that your users
are not Lets look again at the setup from earlier in the eBook.
affected if you suffer the failure of one or more virtualisation
hosts. Central Processing Unit (CPU) Mail Server Intranet Server
File Server AD Server requirements Designing your CPU requirements
for your host Lets assume that each of these servers has 10Gb
servers is done in a very similar way to the memory of memory and
we are going to virtualise all of requirements. You need to
consider how much CPU them except the Active Directory Server. A
quick activity, and what load, each of your virtual servers
calculation shows us that for the virtual servers we will take plus
the load that will be required by the will need 30Gb of memory and
if we give the host host operating system. the minimum of 4Gb then
the host server will need 34Gb of memory. You also need to give
consideration to what will happen in the event of a host failure
and the failover of other virtual servers to the remaining hosts.16
Virtualisation in practice education
17. Virtualisation with Deciding on hardware - storage
Microsoft Hyper-V In a virtualised environment storage plays a Size
By far the most reliable method is: major role. In a simple one
server environment The size of your storage will fully depend on
how Duplication Setting up a duplicate storage system this can be
just a large amount of hard disk many virtualised servers you are
going to run and that is constantly synchronised with the live
data. space on the actual host, in larger environments what they
are going to store. For example a web This removes the single point
of failure. However the storage is normally a NAS, SAN or other
server is not likely to take up a lot of hard drive its expensive
and requires storage solutions that form of centralised storage.
space, however a file server for a School with are capable of
failover, which narrows your field of 1300 students and 200 staff
is going to take up choice when it comes to your storage. Some of
the factors you need to consider when looking at your storage
design are: a large amount of space. A less expensive alternative
is: You also need to consider growth. While you can Size design
your storage requirements for your current RAID (Redundant Array of
Independent Disks) selection of servers you also need to consider
how Setting up your storage solution for RAID 5 or 10 Redundancy
your servers will grow or the addition of more servers. will
mitigate the effects of a particular drive error. Backup This
requires a storage solution capable of RAID (which is probably all
of them) but foremost your Connectivity storage solution must
support hot swappable drives, Redundancy Expandability this way you
will not need to shutdown the storage With centralised storage you
could introduce a system to replace the faulty drive. single point
of failure. Lets look at each of these factors one by one.
Microsoft Hyper-V and failover clustering provide you with a system
that can cope with the failure of Backup virtualisation hosts. If
you dont take similar steps Finally, however else you ensure
redundancy in your with your storage solution then you are
introducing storage system, ensure that your data and your a fail
point. If the SAN or NAS fails then access to Microsoft Hyper-V
provides virtual hard drives (VHD) are backed up. Backing up your
virtual server hard drives will fail and therefore your VHDs will
mean that if your storage solution your servers will not run. There
are various ways by you with a system that can which you can
anticipate and mitigate the effect of fails you will only need to
recover the VHDs to return your system to a functional state. Most
of cope with the failure the failure of your storage system. the
backup software on the market can perform backups of virtual
servers but an obvious choice of virtualisation hosts. would be
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, which has full
Hyper-V support.17 Virtualisation in practice education
18. Virtualisation with Deciding on hardware - storage
Microsoft Hyper-V Connectivity Expandability How you connect to
your storage solution is also Throughout your planning and
implementation of a key factor. Two of the main choices are iSCSI
and virtualisation, you need to have an eye on the future. Fibre
Channel. Which you choose can be affected by This means knowing
whether, and how, you can a number of factors, but the common
choice among readily expand the capacity of your system. education
is iSCSI mainly because of the cost. This, of course, includes your
storage solution, and Once you have chosen your system of
connectivity thats where whats called Dynamic LUN expansion then
you need to consider how much traffic will comes in. be travelling
between your hosts and the storage When setting up your storage
system, you will system. You also need to consider redundancy.
purchase two distinctly different items, the physical Again, a
single point of failure could be introduced hard drives and the
housing for them to go in. if you connect all your hosts to your
SAN or NAS The housing is the piece of equipment that will using a
single network cable and switch. manage your hard drives, the iSCSI
connections Some of the more expensive storage solutions, A simple
scenario is shown in the diagram below, and the partitioning of the
hard drives into what though, do have dynamic LUN expansion, which
is this shows two routes for each host to access the are called
LUNs which then you can connect to the ability to increase the size
of a LUN as you insert storage system. This will remove the
connectivity your hosts. Heres where, if you havent considered more
physical hard drives. single point of failure. how your environment
will grow, you could lock As so often, the major factor in this
decision is yourself into a situation where if your storage
obviously cost. The more features in a storage system becomes full
you may need to remove all the solution the higher the cost.
current LUNs before you can increase the amount of available
storage space. Thats because some of the low end storage solutions
will have the basics, such as RAID array ability, dual controllers,
dual iSCSI connections but will not have dynamic LUN expansion.
This basically means that once you set the size of the LUN on the
storage box it is fixed and if you ever want to increase the size
You need to have an eye on the future. you will need to backup all
the data, delete the LUN and then rebuild it with the increased
size.18 Virtualisation in practice education
19. Virtualisation with Installation Microsoft Hyper-V So you
have run your trial, planned your Network connection In this
scenario the server would require 4 network virtualisation setup
and decided on the interfaces; however this only gives the virtual
servers specifications for your hardware, all you need As we
discussed earlier in the eBook your network on the host a single
connection to the domain LAN. to do now is install the system. That
sounds connectivity can play a large part in your end A much better
scenario would be to increase the simple and to a certain extent it
is. user experience, you also have to consider the number of
network interfaces so that once Hyper-V management of the host and
connection to your is installed you can assign more interface to
the The basic steps include: storage solution. In an ideal world
your host server domain LAN. would have separate connections for
each of the Connecting your hosts to your network networks it has
to service. The simple diagram below shows a host server with a
series of Setting up your storage LUNs network connections.
Connecting your hosts to your storage solution Installing Windows
Server 2008 R2 to your hosts Management LAN Domian LAN Enabling the
Hyper-V role Enabling the failover clustering role Installing your
virtual servers iSCSI 1 iSCSI 2 While these are the basics steps to
installing a The Microsoft Brand Guidelines for Education | 27
virtualised infrastructure there are, as you have probably guessed,
a number of factors you have to consider. Your network connectivity
can play a large part in your end user experience.19 Virtualisation
in practice education
20. Virtualisation with Installation Microsoft Hyper-V Setting
up your storage LUNs experience shows that the end user cannot
detect Validation of the cluster carries out checks on the the
failure of a server currently in use. That said, it is system and
simulates failed hosts. While you can A LUN on a storage unit is a
logical space that can relatively simple to set up, and running the
wizard create the cluster even if elements of the validation then
be assigned to the virtualisation infrastructure. on a host will
guide you through the steps for fail it is worth noting that if you
place a support call How you set up your LUNs and assign them
depends enabling the technology. with Microsoft in the future, they
will ask to see the heavily on the manufacturer of your chosen
storage original validation report to verify that the system
solution. When setting up your LUNs, you need to The first step in
the setting up of failover clustering is was fully functional when
setup. It is also worth consider how much data you are likely to
store, to validate the cluster. To do this you will need all your
making sure validation passes just to give you peace how much this
data may expand. These two factors hosts setup, the Hyper-V role
installed and connection of mind that your system is up to the job.
will affect how many and the size you assign to to your storage
solution complete and working. your LUNs. Failover clustering
Because virtualisation puts a number of virtual servers on one
physical host server, its necessary to plan for the failure of one
host server, which could otherwise have serious and widespread
consequences. Hence the use of Failover Clustering, which is the
technology that allows the virtual servers on a failed host to
failover seamlessly The Microsoft Brand Guidelines for Education |
27 to another host. Effective failover clustering as provided for
in Hyper-V is clearly an essential feature of virtualisation. Its
sophisticated and reliable and Effective failover clustering as
provided for in Hyper-V is clearly an essential feature of
virtualisation.20 Virtualisation in practice education
21. Virtualisation with Management Microsoft Hyper-V So you now
have a fully functioning Microsoft Hyper-V Management Suite
virtualisation infrastructure and all is going well. The management
of virtualisation is a relatively simple job; you manage your
virtual servers as you would any physical server, with updates and
patches all installed to a schedule that you as the Network Manager
have decided upon. The management of the actual Hyper-V hosts is
also fairly simple in that updates and patches are scheduled in
line with your institution or network team policies. The only key
difference is that any restarts of a host server will affect a
number of virtual servers so requires a little more thought. While
it is true that with failover clustering installed the virtual
servers will failover once the host restarts, it would be a much
better plan to move the virtual The main management tool for a
Hyper-V The moving of virtual servers between hosts can be servers
to another host before any updates take environment with failover
clustering installed is the done in a number of ways but if you
want your end place, this way the end users will not get any
failover cluster manager. users work to not be interrupted then
live migration interruption of service. is the service to use. Live
migration moves a virtual From this management suite you can:
server from one host to another without interrupted network access
to it and therefore you end users will Create New Virtual Servers
not notice any interruption in network connectivity. Stop /
Shutdown / Restart Virtual Servers The failover cluster manager is
a simple to use application and provides all the necessary tools to
View the health of network connections / effectively manage your
virtualisation environment storage connections / networks and
because its part of the Windows management Move / Migrate Virtual
Servers suite, very familiar to anyone who works with Windows
Servers. End users will not notice any interruption in network
connectivity.21 Virtualisation in practice education
22. Virtualisation with Conclusions Microsoft Hyper-V The aim
of this eBook has always been to The first of these is for you to
answer. Its about any more. The licensing model that Microsoft help
you with the decisions that face any your school or college, your
priorities, your budget, provides for licensing virtual servers can
actually organisation considering virtualisation. your students.
save you money on your licensing costs. The key questions are - At
the same time we hope that by working with The free version of
Windows Hyper-V gives the you through the other issues, weve
demonstrated option of installing a cut down version of Windows
Whether virtualisation is right for that virtualisation is not to
be feared. It works, that is dedicated to virtualisation, ideal for
your environment. its efficient, and is a real and significant cost
saver environments that dont currently run Windows. Which
technology provider to use for the whole institution. Combine
Microsofts Hyper-V and Failover What storage solution to choose The
key lies in Microsoft Hyper-V, a powerful Clustering technology and
you have a solution that virtualisation technology which, as it is
built into is cost effective, resilient and an extremely powerful
Specification of your hardware Windows Server 2008 R2 you dont have
to pay tool for managing your virtualised environment. The
Microsoft Brand G A solution that is cost effective, resilient and
an extremely powerful tool.22 Virtualisation in practice
education
23. the microsoft visual identity education the microsoft
visual identity the microsoft visual identity the microsoft visual
identity the microsoft visual identity the microsoft visual
identity Useful links the microsoft visual identity (Click arrow to
go to link) Microsoft Education Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 -
Overview Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 - Download Microsoft
Assessment & Planning Toolkit Clarity-IT Solutions The UK
Schools Blog The Microsoft Brand Guidelines for Education | 27 The
Microsoft Brand Guidelines for Education | 27 The Microsoft Brand
Guidelines for Education | 27 Authors Biographies: The Microsoft
Brand Guidelines for Education | 27 The Microsoft Brand Guidelines
for Education | 27 Gerald Haigh Alan Richards Writer Information
Systems Manager at West Hatch High School The Microsoft Brand
Guidelines for Education | 27 For many years, Gerald Brand
Guidelines for Education | 27 on The Microsoft fitted writing books
and articles Alan Richards has been working in Schools for over 17
years and during that time has The Microsoft Brand Guidelines for
Education | 27 education into a career as a teacher and a head. For
some time been at the forefront of using IT. He has led teams that
have been among the first to roll now, though, hes been a full time
writer of articles and books out Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and
SharePoint 2010, many of these successes have been on education,
with a particular interest in the application of IT to showcased in
Microsoft case studies. As well as managing his own schools
SharePoint school management and administration. In recent years
hes been implementation he also manages the SharePoint online farm
for the local consortium of a frequent contributor to the Microsoft
UK Education blogs and to schools. Alan is also a regular blogger
and speaker at various events including SharePoint the growing
library of Microsoft case studies. Europe in Berlin and the UKs
SharePoint Saturday event. 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.