Dotnetpanel Forums

Hi  guys,

We are finally taking the plunge!.

After 12 months with DNP on single server  for webs, stats, dnp and SQL 2005 express,
Mail DNS and remote backup have been bought as services from ISP.

We have been dreaming for a long time to get a complete setup where we can administer everything from DNP.
Before release of DNP 1 we bought a lifetime Licence and before release of DNP 2  we bought 2 more life timers.

This week we invested in 6 servers from DELL
 all  Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5335, 2x4MB Cache, 2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB 4 Mb ram

1. DELL Power Edge 2950 with 4 * 300 GB 10k disks in raid5 for Storage  ´(primarily local backup - it is possible to hot plug 2 extra disks to this server
2. Dell Power Edge 1055   Enclosure for  10 blades  (we start up using 5 blades and hope to add new blades as business grows)
   1. DNS1  2x146 GB 10k Raid 0  
   2. DNS2  2x146 GB 10k Raid 0 
   3. SQL  2x146 GB 10k Raid 0 
   4. Web A   2x146 GB 10k Raid 0
   5. Web B  2x146 GB 10k Raid 0

We have an idea about letting DNS2  also serve MAIL  But this could maybe also be done directly on the Storage server ?

So  all you  EXPERTS..   what good advice would you give us?

How would you set this up?

Looking very much forward to some replies 

Your scenario is well designed.

NS1 is a waste of a machine for only DNS in my opinion

JoCald:

NS1 is a waste of a machine for only DNS in my opinion

It depends on how many domains are you going to host.

kent:

JoCald:

NS1 is a waste of a machine for only DNS in my opinion

It depends on how many domains are you going to host.

Even so kent, 4Gb RAM and 146Gb 10k disks is overkill for DNS of 2 web servers in load balancing, unless you're anticipating major growth. You'd need ALOT of domains to come close to using the potential of that machine.

But if you have the budget for it, then by all means ...better to have more than less

I might suggest you use raid 1 and not raid 0 on the 5 servers with dual SCSI drives. Better to be safe than fast.

As far as NS1 being on its own server. It's a great idea for expansion but keep in mind that NS2 may get used equally or possibly even more than NS1. DNS gets used randomly without priority of any kind. With that in mind NS1 could also serve as mail2. You can always split the mail server/DNS services at some future date if needs be.

JoCald:

NS1 is a waste of a machine for only DNS in my opinion

I totally agree.  

The initial idea was that NS1, would have the backup role for the other servers,
but as you see now we have invested in a dedikated server for holding backup and storage,

So you are right, there is unused capacity here,
Maybe we should go back to original idea  backup/storage server or even SQL could manage NS1,
This would free one server for Sharepoint maybe?

Hello,

Here is a thought.

Use one server for DNS1 and Web.

Use another Server For DNS2 and Web (Load balance these) Makes managing the DNS much easier.

Primary mailserver and DB MSSQL

Secondary Mailserver and DB MySQL

One server as Data/DB/Storage server and put the mailboxes on this server.

Remaining server for growth. Or this as another Web server for your applicarions test box IIS 7, Demos etc...

Just my 2cents

Thanks

Joe

Not to impune your suggestion but the 2 most resource intensive services you are likely to have are mail and database. IMHO these two services should be the first ones moved to their own servers when moving to a multi server hosting platform.

Hello Taylex,

No not at. All I agree that the mail is quite a resource intensive service. I actually host more mail than websites. So I agree that the mail should be set on an individual box. Don't know what I was thinking there.

I suppose the design will be for the hosts preference.

My 2 cents. Install Win2k3 x64 on the host servers. Virtualize everything else using MS VS 2005 R2. This will make it easier to administer and upgrade the servers in the future (if needed). Also allows you to pop in 16-24 GB of RAM in the system which can be spread around each VPS. Once you start virtualizing you'll probably never go back to barebones installs (except maybe for MSSQL).

Once you have all your VPS setup you can easily move them / copy them to other servers if the need arises too. 

Cheers,

Mark 

kantona:

My 2 cents. Install Win2k3 x64 on the host servers. Virtualize everything else using MS VS 2005 R2. This will make it easier to administer and upgrade the servers in the future (if needed). Also allows you to pop in 16-24 GB of RAM in the system which can be spread around each VPS. Once you start virtualizing you'll probably never go back to barebones installs (except maybe for MSSQL).

Once you have all your VPS setup you can easily move them / copy them to other servers if the need arises too. 

Cheers,

Mark 

Thanks  Mark,

that seems to be a fantastic idea..

I am looking into this now.. (spent all day yesterday  reading about Microsofts virtualization)