In my ongoing project (Slamming down the Virtualisation Gauntlet) the time has come to finally decommission the web server. The major issue with the web server was that over time it had become the platform for more than just web hosting – almost anything to do with the public facing Internet (FTP, Web, Mail sweeper, etc) was on this small tower server (a HP TC series) – which was never a comfortable proposition – but being a small company we don’t have the budgets to obtain large amounts of equipment so we have to continually find ways of getting the most out of the equipment we have. However, we finally moved most of the services and either replaced them with alternatives, virtualised them or removed them altogether. The FTP server was a major headache to operate as it was seemingly a honey pot for hack attempts. Now, we use services such as sendspace which takes the pressure off our servers and allows us to rest easier.

An interesting factor has emerged in that we need to maintain a web server of some description as a staging server. Our web sites are designed and maintained internally and published to the hosted service so we can’t tinker with the live web site. With this in mind it is likely that we need to either build a staging platform on the hosted server or maintain a virtual server for web site staging. A staging server is a place where content can be placed for viewing before it gets a public audience. In that sense it acts as a beta server (or I guess a release candidate).

The EDI software platform we were using eventually gave up the ghost which pushed our plans up a gear. We are moving our EDI platform to a hosted service which will give a much improved service to our customer base whilst reducing the load from our existing server base. This particular task is taking much longer than expected as our EDI hosting company are not exactly moving swiftly in our favour (we started to order the service in January and in April we are still waiting for a real progress update!)

In brief – work carried out so far in this project includes:

• Decommissioning Primary Domain Controller and replacing with a more up to date and secure DC
• Migrating Exchange 2000 from an old HP LP2000R to 64-bit Exchange 2007
• Decommissioning older Terminal Servers
• Installing a dedicated File Server
• Migrating Servers to Windows Server 2003
• Reallocating various services to make for a more secure and appropriate environment
• Printer server decommissioning and new virtual print server installed
  the new printer server is working well (Virtualising the Print Server)
• Backup domain controller virtualisation giving a little more security
  the new primary domain controller (a HP DL380) is handling the task admirably (Domain Controller Decommission)
• Web server decommissioning and its services reallocated
  introduction of hosted platform for web hosting, edi and ftp
  various services were either replaced, migrated or removed (Virtualisation Update … Web Server)

 The next step in the plan is to migrate the last remaining old HP LP2000R terminal services machine running a terminal emulation package (16-bit!) connecting into our ERP into a virtual server (or two!) with a 32-bit terminal emulation package. We use a number of tiered terminal services with each tier running more applications. The base tier only runs Acrobat and our ERP with not Internet Services, the next tier runs Office, Acrobat and our ERP with Internet Services – another tier runs additional software that may be required by pockets of users. The reason for doing this is to increase the security of the servers based on the environment in which they are contained.

The project is taking much longer than I had initially expected (doesn’t it always!) and we have had a few disk failures to contend with and needed to upgrade the memory on several of the DL380 servers but with the real progress being made so far things are looking up as we are nearing the top of a very steep hill.

Once this project is a litle further down the road I can continue working on Re-Racking out the computer room which requires making quite a bit of space in the very small room and virtualising many of these servers should certainly free up sufficient space.

Related

• Virtualisation Update … Web Server
• Virtualising the Print Server
• Dealing with Exchange 2007 Recipient Update Service
• Considering switching off WINS
• Moving along the virtualisation