Finally on ESXi4

At last, I have got esxi4 running on the home system. I was having issues installing it on a pc with the Gigabyte MB, research showed that Asus boards were quite compatible, as it happens one pc in the house has an Asus MB, so a quick test  on it showed that esxi4 would install.
So after some hard disk / RAM swapping I set up esxi4.
Now my test domain is all running on that.
Server 2008 R2 - Core edition as DC and file server
Server 2008 R2 - Full installation as Mail server (running exchange 2010)
Windows 7 Pro - Desktop. I use this as a remote dekstop from work etc. Sometimes handy to have an external machine for testing stuff.
Oh, I have a Windows 7 vmware workstation machine setup as my vsphere client. Took a bit research etc to get sphere working on win7 too, but now it's fine.
And finally......... I'm back on SLED 11 again as my main desktop.

Virtual machine system

Well, I have got Microsoft's Hyper-V running now. A fair bit of messing around to get it all workling though. Lots of firewall mod's to get things talking as they should.

I'm running the Stand alone Hyper-V edition, more or less a slightly modified Server Core, with

Hyper-V enabled.

So, what have I got running on it?

• Server Core 2008 R2, is my domain controller, file server.
• Server Core 2008 Full, is my Mail server, running Exchange 2010.
• Windows 7 Pro, is my desktop.
• SLED 11 - is just on there to see how Linux runs on Hyper-V (however Novell and MS have done mods for the SLE versions of OpenSuse so it may not be representative of "true" linux)

At this stage, I dont like Hyper-V, it took ages to set up the host machine, then more ages to set up the client to talk to the host machine. And the performance of the VM's does not seem as good as Xenserver. They have a real VM feel when using them, either on the Hyper-V manager, or as RDP.

But, it's been a good learning curve setting it up. Now I have tried it and thats what I wanted to do. Let's see how long I can put up with it before I go back to XenServer.

Home systems

Now I'm a windows home office. Yep, everything is now on windows .......... well kind of, my virtual machines are hosted in XenServer. I have got this set up now with the final releases of Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

The vm's are : Server 2008 Core as my domain controller and file server. (I would prefer to have the file server on a separate server, but RAM considerations limit me)

Server 2008 Full, is my Mail server, running Exchange 2007 (until exchange 2010 can be installed on this OS)

And finally, my Windows 7 desktop.

My Xenserver box has got 8 GB RAM and 1.5 TB storage.

I have created an extra disk for the file server (500 GB) and similar on the Mail server (but 100GB) I also have got shadow copies running on my file server, taking a nsapshot at 5:00 am every day.

I am using the Server backup software to back up the servers, admittedly only going to the file server drive at present, I need to get an external disk set up. A NAS would be nice!

I have got the other physical pc's in the house backing up to the file server, but not as members of the domain at present, only the vm's are in the domain.

Anyway, it's been fun setting this up.

I think, next time I go back to Linux I will use Linux Mint, I used it for while when waiting for the final windows 7 etc to be release on Technet and found it to be a great OS. Does everything you need straight out of the box.

Cheers for now!

Back to SLED11

I have moved back to SLED 11 again now as my main desktop. It was a good learning experience having Open Solaris as the main desktop, in particular getting all my files etc onto the ZFS file system.
So now, I am running Axigen 7.2 beta on an OpenSolaris VM, hosted on XenServer.
It's not long now until the final versions of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are available so I will probably start setting up some domain stuff again once that is all available.
I may try setting up on Windows HyperV as my Host. I have not used it yet, so that will be good experience.
However, I really must say, you would have to go a long way to beat XenServer, particularly for the kind of stuff I'm doing (home lab stuff). It's just so easy and free too.
I'm upgrading the RAM on the VM host box to 16GB, I need to run at least 3 windows servers on it and if one of those is an exchange server then 8Gb just is not enough.
The plan is to have 1 Dc (Server Core) 1 Exchange server, 1 Share point server, 1 SQL server and then of course at least 1 client. Maybe even another Server Core to be a Web server.
Anyway, thats a few weeks away yet.
Keep you posted.

Main desktop on OpenSolaris

Changed from SLED11 to OpenSolaris. Been wanting to do it for while now.
Now I can play around with ZFS file systems, snapshots etc.
The only thing I'm really having any issues with is media playing stuff, but thats no big deal.
It did detect my nvidia graphics card, so desktop effects work fine, sound is fine.
I had to manually install Flash player.
I have got a 1 TB drive hooked in as an extra pool in zfs and have shared it out to my windows boxes. The auto snapshots are going to be great I'm sure.
VirtualBox will is the vm software I'm using on this box now.
That's all for now.

Domain back to windows

Now I have switched back to windows again for my testing domain.
Now running
Server 2008 R2 Core as domain controller.
Server 2008 R2 Enterprise as mail and web server.
Exchange 2010 mail server
Windows 7 RC1 as client and external test machine for work.
Took a while to get all setup and working, but all going fine now.
I will need to set up my file server etc again on the XenServer system, but that will be good revision setting up the DFS again etc on the Server Core.
Thats all for now.

Changed again..........

Yep, changed server OS again, now got the web site back on open solaris and running axigen as the mail server on Opensolaris.
The web mail client on axigen is just as good as a "proper" client in my opinion.
Now I know theres a lot of AD integration, unified messaging etc that comes with exchange, but hey the download for Axigen is around 27 MB, exchange is several hundred MB, many prerequisites need installing on an MS server before you can install exchange, if you have got it down pat, then I reckon you get an exchange server running in around 45 - 60 minutes.
Axigen can be running in 10.
This is probably going to be a regular thing, changing server OS I mean. It is so easy these days with Virtual machines.
Might work out a rotation, Axigen, Communigate, Exchange and ? hmmm what else is out there? I'll have to keep a look out for something new / different.