Seeking recommendations for virtualization

+3

Brian Cram
Rocketeer
Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 27, 2023

I'm a very small shop, only 9 employees. I recently brought my D3 server back in house after a stint in the cloud. I'm running D3 on AlmaLinux. The hardware is an HP Z2 workstation with an i5-12500 6 core processor, 16GB Ram and 2 SSD's. I do most of my tech support myself, but sometimes farm some work out to a local IT support company, Top Notch. They're recommending I switch to / embrace virtualization and recommending Windows Server with Hyper-V. I'm not a big fan of Windows and no next to nothing about virtualization, but I've seen posts about the benefits. I'm just wondering if the Windows Server is the best solution for me.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

Bruce

I'm not a huge Windows fan either, but I've found that sitting squarely in the middle of the expertise of a trusted I.T. resource is the best way to go. Just don't let them talk you into Linux snapshots as backups instead of file-saves. Snapshots do not restore well for D3 because of the memory residency of data.

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Alex Polglaze
Participating Frequently
Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 28, 2023

I'm a very small shop, only 9 employees. I recently brought my D3 server back in house after a stint in the cloud. I'm running D3 on AlmaLinux. The hardware is an HP Z2 workstation with an i5-12500 6 core processor, 16GB Ram and 2 SSD's. I do most of my tech support myself, but sometimes farm some work out to a local IT support company, Top Notch. They're recommending I switch to / embrace virtualization and recommending Windows Server with Hyper-V. I'm not a big fan of Windows and no next to nothing about virtualization, but I've seen posts about the benefits. I'm just wondering if the Windows Server is the best solution for me.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

Bruce

What about VMWARE? We use that on a HP server and have 8 VM's on the server, 2 for D3, 2 for backup storage, 2 for Windows so we can run MVSToolkit. It works for us.

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R

Richard Thiot
Participating Frequently
Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 28, 2023

I'm a very small shop, only 9 employees. I recently brought my D3 server back in house after a stint in the cloud. I'm running D3 on AlmaLinux. The hardware is an HP Z2 workstation with an i5-12500 6 core processor, 16GB Ram and 2 SSD's. I do most of my tech support myself, but sometimes farm some work out to a local IT support company, Top Notch. They're recommending I switch to / embrace virtualization and recommending Windows Server with Hyper-V. I'm not a big fan of Windows and no next to nothing about virtualization, but I've seen posts about the benefits. I'm just wondering if the Windows Server is the best solution for me.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

Bruce

Bruce,

There are benefits to virtualization. Essentially, it removes "hardware dependencies" from your primary server O/S which means that if you have a full server failure or need to move to a new server the process is much easier. You are able to do image backups of your system and restore that onto a new machine without concern for compatibility with the new hardware or the loading new drivers, etc. However, like Brian "The Man" Cram said, it does not replace your traditional D3 backups.

Your primary virtualization choices are Windows Hyper-V and VMware. I think that VMware is a little bit more difficult to set up but if you have a static environment then once you get that done it pretty much just runs. We have run both and today tend to install Hyper-V more than VMware for smaller companies however with your apparent aversion to Windows, VMware may be the better choice.

Having said all of that, it all comes down to do you "need" it. The answer is a soft no but I would also ask how important is disaster recovery to you. Do you have a plan in place for your business for when your server fails? Since you run D3 on a workstation-class machine, I would probably recommend having a second system that you restore D3 to on a regular basis which could become your server during some sort of disaster. This system should be kept at a different location than your existing machine. It could even be a laptop.

Just my two cents...

Dick Thiot

Maverick Systems

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Richard Ginsburg
Participating Frequently
Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 28, 2023

I'm a very small shop, only 9 employees. I recently brought my D3 server back in house after a stint in the cloud. I'm running D3 on AlmaLinux. The hardware is an HP Z2 workstation with an i5-12500 6 core processor, 16GB Ram and 2 SSD's. I do most of my tech support myself, but sometimes farm some work out to a local IT support company, Top Notch. They're recommending I switch to / embrace virtualization and recommending Windows Server with Hyper-V. I'm not a big fan of Windows and no next to nothing about virtualization, but I've seen posts about the benefits. I'm just wondering if the Windows Server is the best solution for me.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

Bruce

I have always been, and always will be in favor of a standalone Linux server to run D3. You eliminate the need for virtualization software and the complexities of setting it up and keeping it running. You also eliminate the cost. As long as you have good file-saves then you have no real worries if that server crashes. For a nine-user system, you can buy a good quality server for around $750 and just about anything you buy will run your version of Linux. Windows is good for workstations, but servers should run Linux and not have any need for Windows to make that happen.

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B

Bruce Ackman
Author
Participating Frequently
Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 28, 2023

I'm a very small shop, only 9 employees. I recently brought my D3 server back in house after a stint in the cloud. I'm running D3 on AlmaLinux. The hardware is an HP Z2 workstation with an i5-12500 6 core processor, 16GB Ram and 2 SSD's. I do most of my tech support myself, but sometimes farm some work out to a local IT support company, Top Notch. They're recommending I switch to / embrace virtualization and recommending Windows Server with Hyper-V. I'm not a big fan of Windows and no next to nothing about virtualization, but I've seen posts about the benefits. I'm just wondering if the Windows Server is the best solution for me.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

Bruce

Thank you all.

Richard G. That's what I always did, outside of a brief stint in the cloud. Hardware is cheap and I always figured I could just replace it every three years. I've run D3/Linux on 3 or 4 different inexpensive PCs and never had a problem. For my size installation it always made sense.

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Martin Shields
Participating Frequently
Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 31, 2023

I'm a very small shop, only 9 employees. I recently brought my D3 server back in house after a stint in the cloud. I'm running D3 on AlmaLinux. The hardware is an HP Z2 workstation with an i5-12500 6 core processor, 16GB Ram and 2 SSD's. I do most of my tech support myself, but sometimes farm some work out to a local IT support company, Top Notch. They're recommending I switch to / embrace virtualization and recommending Windows Server with Hyper-V. I'm not a big fan of Windows and no next to nothing about virtualization, but I've seen posts about the benefits. I'm just wondering if the Windows Server is the best solution for me.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

Bruce

Virtualisation is the way to go for many reasons. If you prefer to remain on a Linux based system, however, I recommend taking a look at Proxmox (https://www.proxmox.com/en/). I have been using it for a while now and it has proven to be reliable, easy to use but powerful, and it has enterprise support options available (but is free to use if you're comfortable with it).