Just a heads up to my fellow SysAdmins, Sun has struck a deal with Carbonite to distribute a 30 Day Trial of Carbonites online backup software with the latest update to Java. It’s not something you really want in your corporate environment, so be aware if your users have the ability to update Java, you could be getting Carbonite too!
http://java.sys-con.com/node/1027624
~Dan
Following my recent tweets regarding the number of servers were I work, I’ve had some feed back asking exactly how we have that many servers / services running here. I will now attempt to explain it as best I can.
The company I work for (like many other companies of its ilk) is a little strange, born out of academia it has always done things the SCI way whether that way conforms with industry best practice or not. Often in the past it has done things under the impression it would change best practice by doing the task in a new manner.
One such issue has been the companies IT systems.
The root causes of the issue are
What this lead to was a proliferation of servers over the past 8 years, every new project lead to us provisioning a new server. At the time you never noticed the effect the growth was having on the IT department, for the few few years of their life servers generally don’t cause much fuss – its only when they get old they start missbehaving.
The cheap cost of software and its almost instantanious availability (Microsoft Licensing rocks!) meant that we have always been able to play with toys that would normally be outside our reach, for instance we have gone through 4 versions of exchange in the last 6 years who else would have the money to do this? I know several companies that are still standardised on Exchange 5.5 because it works and does the job well.
Along side core systems like Exchange we run several special services, such as Microsoft Content Management Server and SharePoint. Since I joined the company (3 years ago) we’ve gone through 3 versions of SharePont server alone.
Now, Evan asked how we can possibly have 40 servers. I will now try (as generically as possible) to explain it.
Internal Domain
Firstly we have 3 domain controllers supporting our internal domain, this follows a disasterous couple of weeks this year when we lost both of our previous domain controllers when their virtual hosts suffered issues. This prompted us to move the servers back to hardware, just to be sure that if hardware issues do strike again they don’t take down everything, that outage really highlighted what the loss of our internal Domain does to certain web services we run that authenticate against it.
We also run Exchange 2007, currently on a blade supported by an AX150i SAN. Along with another server which acts as a mail relay and anti spam Edge server. We are also running an Exchange 2003 internally for the next few months as we finalise our migration to 2007.
For our file storage needs we run two identical NAS devices, these are set to replicate data between the master and the slave to ensure if the main server goes down that we can switch to a current backup.
Count so far 8.
We also run an app server, this box runs software such as AutoCAD which need to be installed on a central server and deployed out to clients.
Our business system runs on another server, co-existing Navision with other software is a bad idea, we know this because we tried it.
Ansys Server we maintain one server dedicated to our engineering modling software, that box is bascially there to number crunch for us.
Although its virtualised, our print services count towards the totals.
Count so far 12.
After our foray in to Virtualisation we have 4 servers dedicated to this task, two run Virtuozzo Server, one runs Micrsoft Virtual Server 2005 and the latest run is running Hyper-V.
Count So far 16.
Perimeter Domain
Moving on to our perimeter domain we start again with domain controllers, this time two. One hardware and one virtualised box.
DNS server. We host a fair number of DNS records, after several years of issues running DNS with another service we decided to split it off to its own virtual instance.
Exchange 2003. We maintain a second Exchange server on the perimeter domain, this is for use by our clients and the mailing systems attached to our websites. We have tried other mail servers for this role but only Exchange Server has given us proven reliability.
Database Servers. We are in the process of migrating from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 at our DBA’s request we (willingly!) avoided an in place upgrade of our server and provisioned a second box to do the job. Until the migration is complete we’re running two SQL servers.
Count so far 21.
IIS. We run a server dedicated to IIS which at the present time hosts around 40 sites of various ages.
Microsoft Content Management Server. A few years ago we invested time in MCMS we now maintain a server running 5 MCMS sites which we will be looking to maintain for the next 3 to 5 years.
SharePoint 2003. We have clients running extranets on this software, its another box.
SharePoint 2007. Installed last year we are now using SharePoint 2007 for our new sites and extranets.
Issue Tracker. Due to security issues with our issue tracking software it exists in its own virtual instance.
Count so far 26.
Bookshop. We have a very old server running our bookshop, installed in the year 2000 and never touched again.
Ultraseek. Our enterprise search service supports three of our frontline servers.
Other Servers
Firewall. Kind of important, we have a box dedicated to routing / VPN / Firewall duties.
Development Servers. We are running 5 development servers of various ages to support the web developers.
Another App Server. We are running a second app server under virtualisation because it won’t run on our desktops. Another to add to the mix.
The CMP server. My baby, recently retasked from another less glamerous life it now runs the management software I have been clamouring for over the last 3 years. Micrsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007 R2 and 3Com Network Director.
Final Count 36.
Wait. Our VOIP system that got forgotten.
Final Count 37.
Okay, so 37 is a little lower than I originally stated but that is only because I managed to remove a few virtual servers this week by being ruthless.
Is 37 too many for one person to manage? Probably, as you’ll see above I forgot one again. Time to print this entry and put it on my wall just incase I forget again.
~Dan
One of our domain controllers has been unable to request a Domain Controller Certification from our CertServer for a few weeks now, I traced the issue down to the DCom settings.
The fix can be found in KB903220
~Dan
Yesterday I wrote about Hyper-V and how we plan to trail it, for those of you who haven’t read that entry yet you can find it here.
We pick up today with a base Server 2008 install, we’re running 64 Bit Enterprise level Server 2008 to which we have applied all available updates (Especially the Hyper-V update KB950050!). Next task is to install the Hyper-V role to the server, in my case this required a reboot of the system (Not that it should matter, you shouldn’t be running other roles on your Hyper-V server).
Once the server was running I fired up the Hyper-V console and took a look around, the basics were all there. The ability to create and modify VM’s and the ability to connect to them.
Rather than jumping straight in and creating a new VM from scratch I chose to migrate one of our existing Virtual Servers, Amy. This server used to be our main Exchange server for our perimeter network it was replaced by a hardware server a little over a month ago. As Amy has not yet been removed from Active Directory I thought it would be a good test box to move over, especially considering the other candidates were our main Database Server and our SharePoint 2003 server!
After detaching the VHD from the old server I copied it accross to the Hyper-V box, the size of the disk meant it took about 30 minutes to complete so I disappeared off to grab a coffee. Once the hard drive was on the Hyper-V server I created a new Hyper-V VM with some fairly basic specs and attached it to the existing VHD file. I was surprised to find the VM booted first time (With warnings about mouse capturing not working, you really need to know your keyboard shortcuts for a VHD upgrade).
Once it was up and running a spent a few minutes familiarising myself with the remote access feature of Hyper-V. In Virtual Server 2005 we were forced to use a VMRC server to connect to the server if RDP wasn’t running which was a somewhat clunky thing which had a habbit of locking up on our Virtual Server 2005 box. In Hyper-V that has changed, it now appears that there is a souped up version of Remote Desktop running to give you console access to the server. Its a welcome change to the old way of doing things and a major thumbs up to the use of Hyper-V in our environment.
Installing the Hyper-V Integration components to the VM took a few minutes, it required a reboot in order to upgrade the HAL on the Virtual Machine something that was automatic under Windows Server 2003 but apparently needs to be done manually on Vista or earlier clients.
One final reboot later I set the IP address of the virtual machine and everything was back to normal, more importantly it was it was about a bazillion times faster* than it was previously.
Given the success of the initial migration I will be looking at Migrating some of our lower importance VM’s over from VM-Ware.
More on that later.
~Dan
* Please note, no scientific tests were carried out to reach this number. Instead I used the pull numbers from thin air randomiser routine instead.
I was just reading up on Server 2008 Release 2, it appears that it will be 64 Bit only.
Looks like a lot of work for me to get our systems on 64 bit hardware.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/r2.aspx
~Dan
The company I work for has spent a year trying to use Virtuozzo for its server Virtualisation, after a year of poor service and several interesting issues we have made the decision to move away from Virtuozzo as a virtualisation platform.
In the time we spent on Virtuozzo Microsoft released Hyper-V, if they had released it before we started looking at Virtuozzo we would probably have been an early adopter (despite the fact we are corporately standardised on Server 2003). Our previous foray in to the world of Virtualisation was conducted using Micrsoft Virtual Server 2005 which was pretty bland feature wise which was one reason for trying out Virtuozzo. The benefit of hindsight now shows me that Virtual Server 2005 would have done as a platform for the past year.
Now that Hyper-V has been released we are once again looking at the possibility of using Microsoft Virtualisation Products as our Virtualisation Platform, I plan to release a couple of blog entries about how we’re going about doing this and highlighting anything interesting I come accross for you folks to read.
We’re installing Hyper-V on a Dell Power Edge PE1950 rack mount server, the basic spec of the machine is
Already I can see room for improvement on that specification, sadly the box wasn’t originally purchased to be a Virtualisation work horse. So I’ll be looking up the cost of a RAM upgrade (12 / 16 gig) plus perhaps a second processor to add a little more computation power.
As I type this the server is booting up in to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, the 64 Bit version obviously as Hyper-V doesn’t run on the 32 Bit version. My initial impression of Server 2008 is that it is much slicker than previous versions, as yet I’ve not found any new features which would cause me to make the jump to Server 2008 as the corporate server OS choice however its early days yet.
Next task – Installing Hyper-V.
Relevant information for me, thought it might be of interest to you.
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mirjam/archive/2007/08/06/renaming-a-moss-server.aspx
I thought I would share this nugget with you all as its kept my brain mangled for a few hours and I’d like to save someone else the trouble.
Your swyx server must be on the same VLan as the phones in order to run the phone controller.
It works via broadcast which does not work over router bounderies no matter what you are told by swyx themselves.
~Dan
Today I stumbled accross this amazing blog entry http://blogs.technet.com/askds/archive/2007/10/12/documenting-active-directory-infrastructure-the-easy-way.aspx
It covers a really simple way of documenting your Active Directory setup, it saved me hours spent reviewing everything!
I heartily recommend this entry to other Windows SysAdmin’s out there!
~Dan
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