Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 10:38 am
Looking for some advice...
So my company is building a new plant in SC. I am building the IT component of the plant/offices, but this also provides me the opportunity to make that site my DR site.
So my plan is to make the server there a "mirror" of the server room here with minimal delay between data. So if this place were wiped out by a tornado or something, we could fly down there and begin work again with only a few minutes of lost work.
In reality, my company is ok with 1 day of lost work. Anything less would be great, but we'd accept a day. On top of that, We've had entire network outages that have lasted 4 hours, and nobody has batted an eye. (This was way back when I started, the previous IT folks fucked up the server room badly, and we had to shut down the network while we aired out the 114 degree room...)
We're a small company with only 80 employees (not counting SC folks we're hiring), a dozen servers (that I'm going to shrink down to 10ish), one iSeries server, a VoIP, and really not much else. We do not currently do any virtualization because we honestly don't need it. Also I should note that we're about support and service over price. I've yet to hear the word "No" when it comes to my budget or even things out of budget (This is Xanadu for IT guys).
My dilemma is do I want to completely change my culture here in IT and go with virtualization (VMware) or just use physical servers down there in SC? I've now gone through a week of training on VMware, and I know its strengths and its weaknesses (I've been right for years about it...). For a company our size, we can do it, but we don't need to.
AppAssure is the product we're going to be using to help mirror the sites, and do the DR stuff. It works with physical servers as well as virtual ones. We found it to be just as good as VEAM, if not better because of it's ability to do physical servers and it maintains our "one vendor" environment. So that side of things is set.
I just don't know what to do about the servers.
Do I get three "big" servers at each site and virtualize my whole environment? This comes with many perks like lower equipment costs (although not really), less equipment to manage, eliminates single points of failure, makes recovery from failure a quick process, etc.
However, it also comes with negative like we don't know it and could be more dependent on vendor support, the licensing for VMware adds more cost, adds another vendor to the environment, adds another layer of management, constant adjusting of resources to ensure no server is hogging them, etc.
Or do I stick with physical servers?
Pros -
-Technology we know.
-No constantly "squeezing the lemon"
-One vendor
-Actually cheaper
Cons -
-More machines to maintain (again, less than a dozen)
-Slower recovery time (although Dell AppAssure disputes this...)
-Not as "green"
I honestly don't know what to do. We are NOT a rapidly expanding company in terms of technology.I'm not going to be adding a dozen servers over the next year.
I want to lean away from VM because I've always maintain that it's more gimmick than substance, particularly for smaller companies like this one. The VM experts I've been dealing without throughout this process and my training do not dispute this, and even agree.
However, shrinking down my server room's equipment demand is a good thing...right? Why?
100 servers into 20 = good
10 servers into 3 = ?
I mean, is VMware going to make my environment more complicated for no real benefit?
Any thoughts?
So my company is building a new plant in SC. I am building the IT component of the plant/offices, but this also provides me the opportunity to make that site my DR site.
So my plan is to make the server there a "mirror" of the server room here with minimal delay between data. So if this place were wiped out by a tornado or something, we could fly down there and begin work again with only a few minutes of lost work.
In reality, my company is ok with 1 day of lost work. Anything less would be great, but we'd accept a day. On top of that, We've had entire network outages that have lasted 4 hours, and nobody has batted an eye. (This was way back when I started, the previous IT folks fucked up the server room badly, and we had to shut down the network while we aired out the 114 degree room...)
We're a small company with only 80 employees (not counting SC folks we're hiring), a dozen servers (that I'm going to shrink down to 10ish), one iSeries server, a VoIP, and really not much else. We do not currently do any virtualization because we honestly don't need it. Also I should note that we're about support and service over price. I've yet to hear the word "No" when it comes to my budget or even things out of budget (This is Xanadu for IT guys).
My dilemma is do I want to completely change my culture here in IT and go with virtualization (VMware) or just use physical servers down there in SC? I've now gone through a week of training on VMware, and I know its strengths and its weaknesses (I've been right for years about it...). For a company our size, we can do it, but we don't need to.
AppAssure is the product we're going to be using to help mirror the sites, and do the DR stuff. It works with physical servers as well as virtual ones. We found it to be just as good as VEAM, if not better because of it's ability to do physical servers and it maintains our "one vendor" environment. So that side of things is set.
I just don't know what to do about the servers.
Do I get three "big" servers at each site and virtualize my whole environment? This comes with many perks like lower equipment costs (although not really), less equipment to manage, eliminates single points of failure, makes recovery from failure a quick process, etc.
However, it also comes with negative like we don't know it and could be more dependent on vendor support, the licensing for VMware adds more cost, adds another vendor to the environment, adds another layer of management, constant adjusting of resources to ensure no server is hogging them, etc.
Or do I stick with physical servers?
Pros -
-Technology we know.
-No constantly "squeezing the lemon"
-One vendor
-Actually cheaper
Cons -
-More machines to maintain (again, less than a dozen)
-Slower recovery time (although Dell AppAssure disputes this...)
-Not as "green"
I honestly don't know what to do. We are NOT a rapidly expanding company in terms of technology.I'm not going to be adding a dozen servers over the next year.
I want to lean away from VM because I've always maintain that it's more gimmick than substance, particularly for smaller companies like this one. The VM experts I've been dealing without throughout this process and my training do not dispute this, and even agree.
However, shrinking down my server room's equipment demand is a good thing...right? Why?
100 servers into 20 = good
10 servers into 3 = ?
I mean, is VMware going to make my environment more complicated for no real benefit?
Any thoughts?