Hi guys,
I'm considering moving our Web app from a single VPS to multiple VMs on a dedicated server. Since I haven't created or configured production VMs (using Hyper-V) from scratch before, I was wondering if you can help me get started with answers (and suggestions) to some of my capacity planning questions:
1. What type of disks (SATA and/or SSD), RAID level and array configs/tips would you recommend for a dedicated server (Intel Xeon Quad Core with 32 GB RAM) with around 5 VMs:
- 1-2 medium VMs running Windows and IIS for our Web app
- 1 large VM running Windows and MSSQL 2008 R2 (or maybe MSSQL 2012) for database
- 1 medium VM running Windows and Redis for caching
- 1 small VM running Windows and TeamCity for build/deployment
Note: Our Web app gets about 15 requests per second on average with a peak of 30 requests per second. It's expected to increase to around 75 requests per second in a 10-12 months.
3. Approximately, how much RAM and disk space allocation would you recommend for each VM (as listed above)?
4. Should I go with RAID 1 (or RAID 10) for the entire machine, or maybe something like RAID 1 just for the Web server but shared RAID 10 for the database and caching?
5. I've also read/heard that for running SQL Server in a VM, the data and transaction logs must be located on different disks. How can I accomplish that (given my confusion with the simplest RAID setup)?
6. I'll be running Windows Server 2012 (DC edition) on the dedicated server. Generally, how easy (or hard) is it to setup and manage Hyper-V on a daily basis? Does it involve a lot of configuration, optimization and/or troubleshooting? Although I'm technically proficient but I'm just trying to gauge the complexity and effort involved.
Thanks in advance!