I have worked some years with physical machines; but I am approaching now Virtual Environments and I don't understand well how to configure a virtual environment.
I am interested in installing Virtual environments in little firms that often can only afford a single server with some virtual machines
So Here are the points I am currently trying to understand:
Storage:
If I have a raid 10 with enough disks (as 6); I think that in this case I have not to split the disk in volumes because the performances (I/O) are the ones of the raid controller and disks.
But is it better to make two different Raid groups (4 disks + 2 disks) or make only one raid group?
Virtual Machines:
If I have a single volume (raid 10) and have Exchange server and sql and other software; it is better to create a single virtual machine or smaller dedicated virtual machines.
I think (but I really don't know) that a single bigger virtual machine should have better performances while dedicated virtual machines are better if I want to move part of the load on another physical server.
Location of Virtual Machines:
If I have only one volume (Raid 10) I think that it is not important where I place stuff; but it is important to avoid automatic adjustment done by the operating system; such as:
Make a swap file that is of fixed size and in a defragmented area (all blocks contiguous)
Make the Vitual disk of fixed size
Allocate a fixed RAM for each virtual machines; etc.
In my vision a virtual machine is something that allows me to be hardware independent (in case of hardware malfunction) and allows me to backup all the server (not only the data); but not more (for the environment I am working in); I have seen several shadow-copy backup solutions that invalidate my ideas; what you suggest for such little environments; virtual machines or physical machines (we are talking of environments that can be serviced by SBS).
Any suggestion is appreciated
Thank you and Regards
Joe