Virtualization!!!

lyonsje2465 · ‎2011-02-09

Question time!

Obviously if you are uncomfortable discussing specific metrics that is understandable, but I would like to get a good feel for how everybody else handles these hot button topics!

Virtual Domain controllers?!

Do you Virtualize your domain controllers? if so, how do you? one physical as a backup? all physical and no virtuals? Give your opinions!

Virtual monitoring solutions

Solar winds, Nagios, Zenoss, Kiwi, How do you handle it? are those physical or virtual as well?

Give a basic overview of your overall virtualizaion plan (If you feel comfortable in doing such, if not, no big deal!!)

Needless to say, I've run into quite a few seasoned technicians that Live, breathe and drool VMWare/Xen server; on the other hand I've met an entirely different group who detest it, nothing beats cold silicon and aluminum in your data center.

Cheers!

columbus_admin · ‎2011-02-11

Having had a very bad design implemented, keep a couple of things in mind.

IF you use CIFS on your filers, and all the DCs you have are virtualized, they cannot all reside on the same filer. We had this argument with a site at a previous employer...all the DCs were put on the filers, but the filers tired to authenticate to the domain when they started up. Going through the list and failing from one DC to the next caused the filer to have a long startup time.

So they built out a physical system for the filer, then turned around and wanted us put all the virtual DCs in as prefdc entries...much arguing, storage losing the argument, then complaints of slow start up at the next site power down/up...*facepalm*. Finally got the prefdc set to the physical box...then had to get their documentation corrected to start the physical DC up before the filer.

So keep the sequencing of start up/authentication in mind as well. If everything is virtual on one filer, that filer SHOULD NOT have critical dependencies on systems that only run from the filer, be it AD, NIS, LDAP, etc.

As my role was only storage, I can't speak to monitoring solutions.

- Scott