Whats the best way to get started with server virtualization?

Question

We recently bought a new rack and set of servers for it, we want to be able to redeploy these boxes as build servers, QA regression test servers, lab re-correlation servers, simulation servers, etc.

We have played a bit with VMWare, VirtualPC, VirtualBox etc, creating a virtual build server, but we came across a lot of issues when we tried to copy it for others to use, having to reconfigure every new copy of the VM.

We are using Windows XP x86/x64 and Windows Vista x86/x64, so I had to rename the machine, join the domain etc for every new copy.

Ideally we just want to be able to add a new box, deploy a thin boot strap OS (Linux is fine here) to get the VM up an running, then use it.

One other thing we have limited to no budget, so free is best.

I would like to understand others experiences in doing the same thing.

FYI, I am not in systems IT, this we are group of software engineers trying to set this up.

Any links to good tutorials would be great.

Answer 1

The problem you're running into is the machine SID must be unique for each machine in a domain. Of course by copying an image you now break that unique constraint.

I'd suggest that you read the documentation for Sysprep in the reskit and Vista System Image Manager - your friends for XP/Win2k3 and Vista/Win2k8 respectively.

These tools enable to "reseal" your configured instance of the OS such that the next time it boots - it can prompt for information such as network configuration, machine names, admin user ID's, run scripts etc.

Also be aware that the licencing restrictions for Windows desktop clients are generally per image - not per server.

Using these tools with HyperV we created complete preconfigured instances of Win2k3 & Win2k8 that boot to finish installing Sharepoint - going further we used the diffing disks to overlay Visual Studio so our devs could use the production images for their work. It has radically changed our development process.

At this point our entire public website is run on HyperV with of 5 boxes running 15 images for a mix of soft and hard redundancy - they take several hundred million page views per week.

Answer 2

Another option for dealing with the SID probelm is NewSID. This is a simpler tool than sysprep, in that all it does is rename the machine and reassign the SID; if you don't need all the other features of sysprep this is a much easier tool to use.