Friday 17 January 2014

One Post SBS Configuration

We are doing the following and are quite successful with the setup:

  • 2x Windows Server STD
  • Windows CALs
  • Exchange STD
  • Exchange CALs
  • RDS CALs

With that we set up one host with Hyper-V (2012 R2 preferred).

  • VM 1: DC
  • VM 2: Exchange 2013 CU3
  • VM 3: RDS
  • VM 4: LoB, WSUS

We just finished migrating our last SBS 2003 out to this setup (though with two servers and a few extra licenses).

For larger firms we can set up two identical servers and have licensing in place to allow for the following:

  • Server 1 & 2: DC VM with DHCP Failover enabled (new 2012 R2 feature)
  • Server 1: LoB VM with Replica to Server 2
  • Server 1: Exchange
  • Server 1: RDS VM with Replica to Server 2

Because Exchange and SQL have their own built-in redundancy features we have the option to configure in-guest clustering to build out the required redundancy for them.

Or, we can go with two servers with dual SAS HBAs and a dual controller SAS direct attached storage (MD3220, VTrak E610sD, DS3524) and set up an actual Hyper-V Failover Cluster. This option works very well for the very downtime conscious client.

Philip Elder
Microsoft Cluster MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
Third Tier: Enterprise Solutions for Small Business

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the most simple setup with 1 hyper-v server, do you join it to the domain or do you keep the hyper-v server in a workgroup?

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Workgroup for standalone hosts.

HVRemote to configure the domain based RSAT machine/VM and the host.

Chicken and the Egg problem (BTDT) if the host is domain joined and can't authenticate for something like critical changes.

Philip