If you’re reading this, that’s good news because it means last night’s P2V completed successfully. I took the last remaining non-virtualized physical infrastructure server in the lab and made it a virtual machine. Resource and role wise, this was the largest physical lab server next to the ESX hosts themselves.
Resources:
- HP Proliant DL380 G3
- Dual Intel P4 2.8GHz processors
- 6GB RAM
- 1/2 TB local storage
- Dual Gb NICs
- Dual fibre channel HBAs
Roles:
- Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition SP2
- File server
- binaries
- isos
- my documents
- thousands of family pictures
- videos
- Print server
- IIS web server
- WordPress blog
- ASP.NET based family web site
- other hosted sites
- DHCP server
- SQL 2005 server
- vCenter
- VUM
- Citrix Presentation Server
- MySQL server
- WordPress blog
- Backup Sever
- Veeam Backup and Replication
- Symantec Backup Exec
- Fibre attached tape library
- SAN management
I’m shutting down this last remaining physical server as well as the tape library. They’ll go in the pile of other physical assets which are already for sale or they will be donated as sales for 32-bit server hardware are slow right now. This is a milestone because this server, named SKYWALKER – you may have heard me mention it from time to time, has been a physical staple in the lab for as long as the lab has existed (circa 1995). Granted it has gone through several physical hardware platform migrations, its logical role is historic and its composition has always been physical. To put it into perspective, at one point in time SKYWALKER was a Compaq Prosignia 300 server with a Pentium Pro processor and a single internal Barracuda 4.3GB SCSI drive. Before my abilities to acquire server class hardware, it was hand-me-down whitebox parts from earlier gaming rigs.
The P2V (using VMware Converter) took a little over 5 hours for 500GB of storage. So the only physical servers remaining in the lab are the ESX hosts themselves. 2 DL385 G2s and 2 DL385s which typically remain powered down, earmarked for special projects. A successful P2V is a great start to a weekend if you ask me. Now I’m off to my daughter’s T-ball game. 🙂
