The upgrade from SBS 2003 to 2008 didn't go well for me. DCPromo was fine, but somewhere through migrating accounts it failed with a generic error message. During this time users were unable to use the domain therefore I took the decision to start fresh and create new user and computer accounts on the SBS 2008 domain. I have all my machines virtualized on one Dell 2950box. It's a monster of a machine with two processors, plenty of hahrd disks, space and RAM but I'm not happy. I've one single point of failure and believe me when I say, the day it goes down is the day I'll have some serious problems. I baddly need to buy a second box to cluster the systems so that I have something to fall back on but I spent a hell of a lot on this box and I won't have the money to spend on another for quite a while due to work that I want to get done on the house. running on the eSX box at the moment is: Windows SBS 2008, Trixbox, Debian, Windows 2008 standard for AV etc, and a final tiny Linux box for firewall and routing stuff. By the way, I host a number of sites etc for people. They like Apache so for simplicity, their sites are hosted on debian, however more and more people are using the iPhone and like the push provided by exchange 2007 so I'm hosting their mail on that. It's amazing how nice it all plays together. Back to my point. If you can avoid it, and you only have one machine to use for ESX, I wouldn't virtualize any server that's critical unless you are completely sure that it can be restored quickly using your backup solution. Speaking of backups. With ESX, you will need to leave enough space to take a snapshot on the datastore that you have your VM on. This basically means that as standard, if you have a machine using 100GB, leave 200GB available in total for that VM on the datastore. There are ways of customizing this using VMotion etc but for one system using eSX and not ESXI, this is really not worth the hastle. this is my second problem. I have 4TB of space but at the moment, I just don't have the space available to make snapshots so my backup solution is based inside the VM's so it's not really taking advantage of what I really wanted to get from using ESX. So, if your thinking of virtualizing it, just be very sure that it will meet your needs long term. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh System administration Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh System administration Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie From: Andrew Hodgson <Andrew.Hodgson@allpay.net> To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Date: 29/09/2010 10:42 Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Upgrading from SBS 2003 to 2008 Sent by: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org Hi, Here are some virtualisation scenarios using Hyper-V: http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2008/09/15/sbs-2008-and-virtualizatio... More people are using Hyper-V for SBS virtualisation than ESXI. Whilst virtualisation is going to make backups and hardware swapouts easier, it is going to make SBS integrated backups more complex, and as such with the current version at least I don't see any mileage in virtualising the SBS standard server unless you want to host other servers on the same hardware. The memory requirements for SBS 2008 are a lot more than 2003, and you really see a performance bottleneck if there isn't the RAM there. I have a beta link for SBS7 at home, because I use SBS at home to get all the server technologies cheaply, although the mainstay of what I do at work uses the standard server products. Thanks. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [ mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura Sent: 29 September 2010 10:17 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Upgrading from SBS 2003 to 2008 Andrew, the shop is small enough to start from scratch. I'd like to virtualize the server to make backups easier and potentially move the server from physical hardware to other physical hardware if ever necessary. Does anyone have a download link for the public beta of SBS 7? Thanks Frank -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 3:18 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Upgrading from SBS 2003 to 2008 Hi, A few thoughts: SBS isn't supported running in production under VPC. It is supported in HyperV for sure, and possibly ESXI also, but anything else would be for test environments only. Why are you wanting to virtualise your SBS box? As for upgrading, there is SBS7 in beta test at the moment, you may want to wait for that before jumping in? You can't do an in-place upgrade from SBS 03 to SBS 08, you can migrate the settings using the migration tool, but you need to have a source and destination server for that to work. You could also throw everything away and start over, backing up mail and documents of course, depending on how many users you have on the system. Thanks. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura Sent: 27 September 2010 01:36 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Upgrading from SBS 2003 to 2008 Hi all, it is about time for me to upgrade our own internal server from SBS 03 to SBS 08. We have had 03 running in a VM under VPC 07 for some time now. Should we still run SBS 08 as a virtualized server? If so what is the most accessible means of doing this, HyperV, Fusion on the Mac, VMWare Workstation, or something else. I loved VPC but I don't think it can work with 64 bit guest systems. Also what host hardware and OS should I use. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated since sighted help is rarely available around here. Tia Frank _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins -- 98% of our clients would recommend us Client Survey Jan 2010 Registered in England No. 02933191. UK VAT Reg. 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