| Guidelines To How To Build A Microsoft Virtual Server Host |
| Monday, 29 May 2006 by Michel Roth | |||
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Hardware • If possible choose physical hardware that has at least 2x disk subsystems -- one for the Host OS, and the second to store your Virtual Machine Guests (VMs) • If possible have physical hardware that can house a large 200+ Gb SATA/PATA disk locally to store ISO images and your library of VMs. • Dual Processor CPU or better is ideal, but single processor is OK if there is no alternative • You can use multiple NICs or Network Adaptor Teams but it is unsupported • There are server guides on estimating system capacity for Virtual Server Using an Existing pre-built server • Wherever possible you should install on a fresh build of Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise edition and take full advantage of the Virtualization CALS • If you are a small environment you can use Small Business Server 2003. • You can install Virtual Server on a SQL server but there are memory constraints • You can install Virtual Server on a Domain Controller but there are considerations • If you don not want to install the IIS component, you can install the Web Administration this on another Server Building the Host OS • Wherever possible you should use Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise edition and take full advantage of the Virtualization CALS • Download the latest version of Virtual Server R2 • If you have several physical hosts to build (eg a cluster) it would be advantageous to create a scripted build for each node • Consider if you want to implement Virtual Server Host Clustering using a SAN or iSCSI to give high availability to your VMs. There are multiple guides to help you do this • If your Virtual Server installation fails you can troubleshoot the log file in %temp%\VSInstallLog.txt • If you can disable TCP segmentation offloading • Defrag the Host system drives • Defrag the Host pagefile with Sysinternals PageDefrag • Configure Virtual Server to store your VMs on separate spindle to your OS • Install minimal apps/utilities on your Host OS. Particularly exclude utilities such as Nero Post Installation and tweaking • Configure the Virtual Server Administration Website to use SLL • If you keep getting prompted to enter your credentials refer to: Virtual Server Administration Website prompting for user credentials • Configure you Anti Virus to exclude VMs • Backup software can interfere with your performance • There are several other guidelines to improve the performance of Virtual Server on the Host • Please don't use /3GB in your BOOT.INI- okay? Just some general notes • Just a reminder that a user does not really need admin rights on the host to manage VMs • Don't use NTFS compression to store active VHDs • Currently a maximum of 64 Active virtual machines per physical host Read the original, hyperlinked article here. Check back for updates.
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