Re: Virtual Server and SBS

Leythos wrote:
In article <82978B45-9B21-4533-B534-B62482E81140@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
charlie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
Simply not true in a test environment. I ran a LOT of SBS in virtual
machines during the writing of my R2 book, and I never gave the OS
more than 1 GB. I frankly didn't need to in order to have acceptible
performance. I'm not suggesting you should run a 25 user production
environment on 1GB, but a test environment? Perfectly adequate.

Ok, in a limited use/test environment, then the minimum specs is
acceptable. I have to ask, other than walking through screens, what's
the point of installing it to TEST if you're not going to really test
it?

I've been doing systems testing for decades, and you can not properly
test SBS and experience the real (read that as production level)
performance or see how it uses RAM or how exchange works with a proper
amount of RAM over a two week span, or how SQL uses RAM over a two
week period or how AV / Exchange aware software performs, etc.. if
you don't have a proper amount of RAM.

Maybe I take exception to the word "Testing Environment" when "playing
around with for fun" should have been used instead.

I agree, if you are going to just walk through the wizards/screens and
do documentation work/snapshots, then 1GB is plenty.

A test could be installing a new program for compatibility testing, testing
Windows updates, testing if a specific network setup will talk to other
computers, testing the results of group policies. There are many things that
you may want to test but don't need to know how it acts under a load. That
comes much farther along in the testing process. Virtual machines are
excellent for proof of concept type testing. Once you get it working in a
virtual environment you can expand the test. I use a very minimal test
machine for stuff like this. I have an old 1.6 GHz P4 with 2 GB RAM, Server
2003 and Virtual Server 2005. It is more than adequate for scenario or
concept testing.
--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca




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