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TheCatt
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Post by TheCatt »

thibodeaux wrote: (teaching an AWS class in fact ...)
How is that going?
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Post by thibodeaux »

Meh. I'm not quitting my day job.

BTW, AWS *does* have "NAS in the cloud" (https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/windows/faqs/) but unfortunately it only connects to their servers (or across a VPN). I don't know why they require that; it sounds like it's basically what you need.
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Post by TheCatt »

Storage Gateway might work as well, but no idea if you need to be within a VPN for it. It presents a volume, and backs up all data to S3 automatically. But it's probably too expensive for Cake's needs ($50-100/month, I'd estimate)
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Cakedaddy
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Post by Cakedaddy »

Here I am. Almost 2 years later, and still running on an old failing PC. . .

I have a new quote from Dell and like what they are offering.

New questions though: Additional Virtual Machines for Windows Sever - This is an option in the Config your server list. I know more about virtual machines than I used to and am interested in this. Rather than having one server running a bunch of processes, I can have multiple vertual servers each doing one thing. I'm interested in this for:
1. Business stuff (files, email, quickbooks)
2. Plex
3. Games

I have wanted to host various servers over the years(games and Plex), but was not interested in opening up ports to my email/QB server so we could play Forest.

1. Do I need to buy a separate copy of Windows for each VM?
2. Each VM gets dedicated cores on the CPU, so I would never have full CPU use available for any given VM at any given time?
3. Does each VM get its own IP address? Do I need multiple ethernet ports to keep VMs separate? I'm guessing all IP addressing is handled at layer 3, built into the network adapter so each VM thinks it has it's own network connection, but it's actually being shared.
4. Is the server handling the virtualization, or is it built into Windows? Is it really a windows server, that then runs multiple copies of window as applications/processes?
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Post by Leisher »

I want to answer your questions, but I'm just learning shit myself.

I know Windows Server comes with HyperV licensing, but I'm not 100% sure you need licenses for server for each VM or not. I'm losing track of how the licensing goes thanks to MS constantly changing things. I think it might depend on the version of server you're running. I know some are installed instances and others are based on core.

If you'd like I could forward your questions to my Dell MS Licensing rep and get answers?
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TheCatt
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Post by TheCatt »

The last time I dealt with hyper v, which was 10 yrs ago, you had to have a certain level of windows server (enterprise? Data center?) Or you had to have a standard license per VM.

But I haven't had to deal with IT stuff in a long time
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Post by TheCatt »

2. You can typically either reserve CPU or thin provision the CPU, where you can provision more CPUs than you actually have.

3. Yes, own IP. Or multiple IPs if you want. They will use virtual NICs that are software based. Your VM host has a Virtual switch they operate off of. Can have it's own subnet or just forward DHCP to your main router.

4. If you use HyperV you have one copy of Windows that the hosts all the other VMs.

You might also be able to use things like Docker, or run VMs that are consumer OSes like Windows 10 to make things cheaper. Docker is probably too complicated to bother with for you purposes though.
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Post by Leisher »

TheCatt wrote: The last time I dealt with hyper v, which was 10 yrs ago, you had to have a certain level of windows server (enterprise? Data center?) Or you had to have a standard license per VM.

But I haven't had to deal with IT stuff in a long time
HyperV has changed a LOT in 10 years and they've really been stealing large chunks of the market from VMWare, particularly from the SMB segment. Turns out "free" and "written in Microsoft, which you already speak" is a lot more attractive than "expensive" and "has proprietary language".
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Post by TheCatt »

I remember VMWare did become free as a result, but that was also years ago. (Pay for support). VMware had more flexibility in terms of support for other OSes, and a thinner hyper visor layer, etc. But HyperV was sufficient, even when new, that we used it for test/dev loads.
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Post by Leisher »

VMWare's free version is pretty scaled down.

I think HyperV only requires payment for high availability.
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Post by Cakedaddy »

From what I've gathered, in some instances, each VM needs its own copy of windows, but Enterprise version avoids this (someone mentioned the $900 server license, unless you have Enterprise, for running Plex on a VM). I'm using Essentials version so I don't have to work about client licenses. I don't know the difference between VM and Hyper V. I'll be asking my Dell rep these questions, so you don't have to bother.

Worst case, Plex and games are on the current, unreliable server, and all the business stuff is on the new one. But if I can eliminate the old one (cost of running it, plus it's going to eventually die), I'd like to.
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Post by TheCatt »

Leisher wrote: VMWare's free version is pretty scaled down.
We used it at my last company for some of our dev/test. For Cake's purposes, it does everything he needs. It doesn't let you hot migrate between physical servers, etc. But, Cake really only needs Hyper-V
Cakedaddy wrote: Hyper V
Windows' hypervisor. Built into the OS. VMware - Its own OS.
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