Re: Google Apps Premier and OpenOffice -- PCTECH

Keep asking, the answers are worth the read.
And no, you are not displaying your ignorance, but rather you are displaying your pursuit of truth.

Jeff Crosby wrote:

Lukas/Walden,

Thanks for taking all this time. I think my ignorance is on display for all to see.

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 16:04, Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Initially, we priced out 2 physical servers to spread the load of 5 virtual
servers and for redundancy. If one of the physical servers would have a
problem, the other could handle all 5 for a spell. Now we're in the "let's
get the costs down" phase. If we go with 1 physical server, we could keep
the old servers as backups instead of buying a second physical server.

This stuff is usually not as simple and flawless as one might think it
is. A High Availability environment requires on-site personnel with
the appropriate expertise - with external expertise, a HA environment
makes little sense, unless you also have appropriate SLAs with the
external expertise.

Be aware of application support when using virtualization and think
about the consequences when virtualization critical base
infrastructure like domain controllers.

We're currently a workgroup, not a domain. Moving to a domain is part of all this. What's the issue with virtualizing domain controller(s)?

1) Receive orders from customer and salesreps, forward to System i for
processing, receive results from System i, and transmit same to customers
and salesreps (mission critical).

What does mission critical mean? How much downtime is acceptable? How
fast do you expect recovery when your server room burns down? How much
when the server burns? Or, what kind of SLA do you have to satisfy
with this infrastructure?

Orders received today are loaded this evening/night and delivered tomorrow. This PC server gets the orders to the System i. The System i processes all the orders (the _true_ LOB mission critical). If the PC Server goes down, all the orders would need to be entered via green screen. Time-consuming, but doable. The current PC doing this task is 6.5 years old, running flawlessly, but . . . If theSystem i goes, we're toast. There is no HA on the System i. I have approached 3 different CEOs over a period of 20 years about that. Nothing so far. And they DO get it.

5) Exchange (unless we go with Google Apps).

Where are your domain controllers? For redundancy, you need at least
two. Remember many special considerations when implementing
virtualized domain controllers.

See my response above.

As a baseline, for your needs (ignoring SLA/redundancy) you need at
least three machines - an SBS 2008, a terminal server and a server for
your LOB app. I would not bring redundancy or a SAN into this mix: The
easier a setup is, the easier it is to fix.

A SAN is harder to manage than multiple physical servers? Why is that?

The cost difference between a SAN and non-SAN setup for this is $1,619.
Still think a SAN is overkill?

What kind of SAN? I seriously doubt that, because IBM charges about
10kUS$ - 15kUS$ for their entry SANs. Without any disks.

Cybernetics miSAN-D8/T4 with a Dell PowerVault LTO-4 External TBU.

--
Jeff Crosby
UniPro FoodService/Dilgard
P.O. Box 13369
Ft. Wayne, IN 46868-3369
260-422-7531
www.dilgardfoods.com

The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the opinion of my company. Unless I say so.

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