My organization is relocating to a smaller office when our lease expires this April, so I have been tasked with migrating
our network to the new building. We are also using this opportunity to weed out our obsolete equipment and modernize the network. I have less than a year of real world application experience, so the insights of someone well versed in this realm would be greatly
appreciated.
We have 8 Windows Servers on the network (2 DCs): 4 are running Server 2003, one server is Server 2000, which really serves no function at this point, and three servers with Server 2008 R2.
The DC's are a 2008 R2 file server which we use to access a database file and access other documents, and the second DC is the Server 2003 with Exchange 2007. Other servers include one being used for Symmantec Endpoint Protection, one for Payroll, and one for Remote Desktop that ties into our SonicWall VPN hardware.
I'm just trying to get the opinions of what I need to be focusing on first? We definitely want to migrate the end of life 2003 Servers to 2012 R2 or possibly 2016 if it is released soon, but the main concern for now would be getting the current servers imaged and placed into a virtual environment that I can have ready to go at the new location quickly. I figured a later migration of the OS's/Exchange would be much easier to complete once everything is virtualized. Possibly something I could gradually roll over rather than having to do everything at the same time.
I need advice on selecting a virtualization solution that would be able to handle all of these servers and then some. Space is a necessity, so a rack mounted piece of equipment would be great. I've been looking at HP's ProLiant series so far. Future scalability is preferred.
Also, I would like to add a NAS for storing server backups on the network, and I was wondering if thisDiskStation DS1513+ would be a wise decision or is there something that would be more redundant and quick for around the same price? (<$1500).
Finally, for ease of migration and administration, I still cannot decide between Hyper-V and VMWare. I'm leaning towards Hyper-V since we are already so invested in Microsoft. All thoughts, advice and suggestions are welcome and encouraged at this phase! Thanks everyone, glad to be a member of the community.![:)]( ":)")
We have 8 Windows Servers on the network (2 DCs): 4 are running Server 2003, one server is Server 2000, which really serves no function at this point, and three servers with Server 2008 R2.
The DC's are a 2008 R2 file server which we use to access a database file and access other documents, and the second DC is the Server 2003 with Exchange 2007. Other servers include one being used for Symmantec Endpoint Protection, one for Payroll, and one for Remote Desktop that ties into our SonicWall VPN hardware.
I'm just trying to get the opinions of what I need to be focusing on first? We definitely want to migrate the end of life 2003 Servers to 2012 R2 or possibly 2016 if it is released soon, but the main concern for now would be getting the current servers imaged and placed into a virtual environment that I can have ready to go at the new location quickly. I figured a later migration of the OS's/Exchange would be much easier to complete once everything is virtualized. Possibly something I could gradually roll over rather than having to do everything at the same time.
I need advice on selecting a virtualization solution that would be able to handle all of these servers and then some. Space is a necessity, so a rack mounted piece of equipment would be great. I've been looking at HP's ProLiant series so far. Future scalability is preferred.
Also, I would like to add a NAS for storing server backups on the network, and I was wondering if thisDiskStation DS1513+ would be a wise decision or is there something that would be more redundant and quick for around the same price? (<$1500).
Finally, for ease of migration and administration, I still cannot decide between Hyper-V and VMWare. I'm leaning towards Hyper-V since we are already so invested in Microsoft. All thoughts, advice and suggestions are welcome and encouraged at this phase! Thanks everyone, glad to be a member of the community.
