timmy43016 Posted February 17, 2012 Report Share Posted February 17, 2012 I am trying to decide a few things. I know I have Apple and Windows fanboys so please keep the posts objective. I need to seriously understand what works and what is all hype. This enviroment has less than 100 employees and less than 200 devices to manage (keep in mind NO SECURITY EXISTS which I intend on changing). I have a software company that I am consulting for and they want to get "up to speed" with technology and security. I am weighing all options at the moment with Apple Lion server vs. going with a VM solution or Windows. The apps this place runs are not enterprise specific. They mostly either run a free software for DEV purposes or some black box simple program that will work on any platform I throw it at. I am looking for recommendations pro's/con's between these options. I have plenty of VM/Windows experience, but Lion is VERY new to me and the data center mgr is hot and heavy from some white papers he had read about Lion. From a security aspect I am having trouble wrapping my head around Lion. All I get is that "it just work's" which is great and all for an end user, but from an admin perspective I am not happy with that answer. This place needs security (as they have none..no proxy nothing). They have server 03, but do not even bother using GPO's to govern the environment. Please let me know what experiences with these you have. Any questions I will try to field as asked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EssFo Posted February 17, 2012 Report Share Posted February 17, 2012 (edited) I don't see many OSx level deployments in the enterprises I consult for. From a virtualization standpoint your big players are Vmware, Hyper-V and Xenserver. I'm not going to speak for anything Mac related but from an industry standard standpoint I would use a Windows solution on any of the mention Hyper-visors. Keep in mind all three of those vendors have free versions you can run for a production environment. If you have any specific questions I do this for a living. Edited February 17, 2012 by EssFo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Second Gen Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 (edited) I work for a large insurance company supporting thousands of servers and we use VMware (With both Linux and Windows virtua; servers). Microsofts hypervisor is also making good progress and would think seriously in a smaller location. Also if you virtualized you environment to handle twice the virtual servers it would failover automatically in the event of a catastrophic. This is a feature in VMware that I assume is in place for the MS offering. In my space uptime is king.. Just be careful to watch how many virtual servers you are running on the farm. Too many and then you will not have the failover option. Example – We build 8 hosts (Physical part of the solution) and install up to 7 hosts worth of virtual servers. So if we need to perform maintenance on one host or if one of them fails the other hosts will pickup the workload. Just be ready to pay for licenses as this part will cost whether is it Suse or Windows you are running. If you ever really want to talk more I can provide more benefits and some of the licensing pitfalls. Edited February 18, 2012 by Second Gen Broken nonsensical rambling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EssFo Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Hyper-V 3.0 should be released via Beta release this month. I would wait for that version to drop if you want to go that route. From a feature standpoint it actually looks better than VMware. HA and SRM (site recovery manager) from VMware is nice. We use to migrate our datacenters to other locations in case of a failure. It's pricey though. I think you need to get at least Enterprise licensing. We just purchased Vmware 5.0 licensing for 8 servers and it was almost $70K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timmy43016 Posted February 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Thanks for the feedback. I really like vm and understand host to vm ratio. Can you elaborate on the Mac comment? What is the biggest issues with running a Mac in an enterprise situation? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Spam Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Lion has so many problems. I would do a 10.6.8 server in a heart beat. But i have no idea knowledge in industries though. Sorry. Can only speak on a personal level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EssFo Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Thanks for the feedback. I really like vm and understand host to vm ratio. Can you elaborate on the Mac comment? What is the biggest issues with running a Mac in an enterprise situation? My guess would be support. I go to a lot of virtualization user group meetings and have never ran across anyone who uses it. That of course don't mean it's a bad product. The online support for Vmware and Hyper-V is very large. It's easy to use, rock solid and has enough functionality in the free version you may not need to buy anything. If you're really an OSx fan then Xenserver would be more to your liking. Lots of functions can only be done from command line. I personally don't like it. Our Citrix Xendesktop environments run on it but I'm in the process of getting it migrated to a Hyper-V environment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nyall86 Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Send me a PM if you are interested Sonicwall products for increasing your security. My company offers configuration and management services. Sonicwall makes a great and well priced product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate1647545505 Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 I would say work slowly, divide the solution into phases. VMware is powerfull, but don't forget the back end to make all the cool stuff work (SAN,Networking Provisions, etc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted February 19, 2012 Report Share Posted February 19, 2012 Lion has so many problems. I would do a 10.6.8 server in a heart beat. But i have no idea knowledge in industries though. Sorry. Can only speak on a personal level. yep. and they are already planning on shelfing lion with the release of 10.8 this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Spam Posted February 19, 2012 Report Share Posted February 19, 2012 Ryan, im not a fanboy but i literally read mac forums twice to three times a day. I had a big WTF earlier this week after i read about it and some of the changes they are making. We are seeing the death of a personal computer before our eyes. This is the future taking shape. The next generation of kids will never ever know what wires are or that big tan or black box is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted February 19, 2012 Report Share Posted February 19, 2012 Ryan, im not a fanboy but i literally read mac forums twice to three times a day. I had a big WTF earlier this week after i read about it and some of the changes they are making. We are seeing the death of a personal computer before our eyes. This is the future taking shape. The next generation of kids will never ever know what wires are or that big tan or black box is. By 2013 an iMac will just be a big locked down iPad. :lolguy: *posted from my macbook pro* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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