I'm planning the deployment of a Windows Server 2012 R2 domain and need some virtualization advice, particularly when it comes to RAM and disk configuration.
My current plan is to purchase one copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 and install it on bare metal with just the Hyper V role enabled (will not be joined to the domain). I will then be using the virtualization rights to install one guest Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Essentials Experience role enabled (so DC/AD/DNS) - we will have over 25 users so cannot take advantage of the Essentials SKU - and one other guest Windows Server 2012 R2 to run as a member file server. I know I will need CALs for Essentials. I will be using local storage on the host.
I did toy with the idea of installing the Essentials server on bare metal, but because I'm going for the W2012R2 standard SKU, it seems silly not to take advantage of the virtualization rights seeing as it won't cost any more money... Is my assumption a good one? I have previous VMWare ESXi experience but no MS Hyper V experience.
I know this type of question is frequent, but it seems hardware sizing rules are different for hypervisor hosts and I'm a bit lost.
RAM
I'm looking at Dell hardware with 32GB RAM - I will be allotting at least 16GB to the Essentials VM. One thing I'm unsure of is how the hypervisor is alloted RAM? How much RAM should it be given? is there some rule of thumb linked to the number of VMs?
Disk config
I've read a lot about the disk configuration and the consensus seems to be to use a hardware RAID 10 configuration for the VM storage and hardware RAID1 for the host OS. Is this overkill? Instead, can everything reside on the RAID10 config? Or is there some other way i'm not aware of?
NIC config
Should the host have its own dedicated NIC and the VMs use another?
Replica DC
I would like to introduce a replica DC for redundancy - cost wise the easiest thing would be to make the second guest VM a DC (no need for second W2012R2 license etc), but opinion seems to differ as to the usefulness of putting a replica DC on the same hardware as the PDC - if the host goes, then everything goes.... Opinions?
thanks for any advice.