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In our small office we are currently running a standalone tower server with WS 2008 R2, SQL Express and IIS. This server is going to be decommissioned and scrapped as its old and very noisy.

We are going to purchase a new server with WS 2012 Standard and a heap of ram. It will still be a standalone server so it will be a domain controller, have SQL Express and IIS installed. We intend to install the hyper-v role and host a second virtual server to distribute the load.

We are a small company and have only 15 staff members so its not a huge load on the server.

Can a single server handle this type of installation, we don't want to purchase two servers. If so how should it be configured with regard to which software packages should be virtualized(if any). Redundancy is not a huge issue for us.

This question relates to software not hardware.

Reafidy
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2 Answers2

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All of the roles/services you mentioned can be easily virtualized and are fully supported by Microsoft as virtualized workloads. My suggestion would be to install the OS and the Hyper-V role on the physical server and virtualize your DC, SQL, IIS and Exchange servers. Read the following to understand Windows Server 2012 licensing for virtualized workloads:

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/briefs/win2008-virtual.aspx

As far as the hardware is concerned you'll need to give us some specific specs, but almost any server class hardware will support virtualized workloads. The number of virtualized workloads is dependent upon the number and type of processors and the amount of RAM installed.

EDIT

To clarify the terms used when talking about virtualization:

Hypervisor: This is the component/software that you install that allows you to create virtualized workloads (virtual machines). There are basically two types of hypervisors; Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 hypervisors install on bare metal (installed directly on the physical server). Examples of Type 1 hypervisors are VMware vSphere, Windows Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. Type 2 hypervisors install within the operating system running on a physical host. Examples of Type 2 hypervisors are VMware Player and VirtualBox.

Host: This is the physical machine that hosts the hypervisor component, whether Type 1 or Type 2.

Guest: This is the virtualized workload/virtual machine that is running within the hypervisor.

What I'm suggesting is that you install Windows Server 2012 w/ the Hyper-V role on a single physical server and then create virtual machines within Hyper-V for the workloads you've described. The workloads are the virtual machines that will be running AD DS, SQL, IIS and Exchange.

You're going to need more than 8GB of RAM but you should check the system requirements for the host OS and for each workload before purchasing the server and RAM to make sure both will support the amount of RAM you're going to need.

joeqwerty
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You may configure Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 to virtualize your DC, SQL, IIS and Exchange servers. I highly recommend that you enable dynamic memory when you're creating your VM and that your startup memory is at least 1024MB. Based on experience, the wizard will tend to set your startup memory to half of the memory you set on the memory screen when you check Use Dynamic Memory.

Once you start running your VMs do adjust the memory weight and buffer under the VM settings as needed to ensure RAM is allocated to the VM that needs it most. More importantly, watch your server with Resource Monitor to make better decisions on how to allocate resources to your VMs.

Brennan Neoh
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