ReedMikel... how many agents do you plan to support withing the next 2 years on this K server?

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: boudj

I'd guess 250 - 500.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: ReedMikel

Then I'd recommend a server that is Quad Core (1 processor is fine, 2 is better), load up on the RAM, and go with SCSI drives in RAID 5 config. You should look at either an HP or a Dell server for this role. I'd also recommend dedicating it to this role as well. I recently bought a Dell PE2950 with:

-> 5 - 146 15K SCSI drives (RAID 5)
-> 16GB RAM
-> 2 - 2.0Ghz QC Processors
-> Redundant Power Supply
-> 3-yr NBD Support

I got it for $3300.00 (Tax included).

Basically I look at it as a good investment that when amoritized over 5 years will come out to $660/year.

Just my opinion anyway.



Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: boudj

Actually, that is the model I was just looking at on Dell's site

What do you think of running my KS in a virtual environment?

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: ReedMikel

If your going to go Virtual, then IMHO the only real option for this application is ESX.

Forget host based virtual products (MS Virtual, VMWare server) for running Kaseya. It's too IO intensive. They work great for small loads and I use them to run a couple of internal servers here that are not mission critical.

And until they've been tested in the real world, I would not use Hyper-V and Citrix XENServer for mission critical work.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: misolutions.com

Also don't forget, Kaseya does NOT support or endorse Virtualization in any way shape or form. So if you choose to run Kaseya in a Virtualized fashion, say goodbye to support

As for why... It really boils down to MS $QL acting "stupid" in VMs. For now reason, you will start getting the crazy CPU spikes... or Non-working database accesses... or the DMA will decide to just crash your OS for non-existant "illegal accesses"

As long as you are willing to reboot your VM every other day tho, all "should" be well I suppose

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: Russ

That's interesting about MS SQL. Are you saying that's with the Kaseya DB or SQL in general?

I have a number of SQL implementations runing on ESX and have never seen that behaviour.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: misolutions.com

We have a very intensive sql server running under esx as well just fine (32bit in this case).

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: Coldfirex

We are using VMware ESX 3.5 and it is the best move we ever made.

Being pretty small and already having 2 servers, it was too much putting another one in for connectwise, more servers than staff!!

So I now have:

SBS server 2003 with exchange
64 bit 2003 server with Kaseya
32 bit 2003 server with Connectwise
3x XP Pro workstations

We saw a significant increase in performance with exchange and general file access and intranet response.

I had a server blue screen the other night due to a storm cutting power and the UPS running out. It corrupted the exchange database and several other nasty looking problems on the domain controller.
I just deleted the server and restored from the previous nights backup, all from the comfort of my lounge chair, took 2 hours, no faultfinding, no stress, brought it back across, turned it on and it all worked.

This was probably due to the hardware we purchased for the changeover.

Specs we used:
Intel 5400LX case (redundant fans, psu etc)
5000psl motherboard
12 port Adaptec SAS controler
4 x 15.4k Cheetah hard disks in RAID 10 for systems
4 x 1 Terrabyte Sata disks for data
16GB RAM
2x Xeon processors - giving 8 cores

After a month or so and reading about how Connectwise pushes that we install as much RAM as possible, we put in another 8GB of RAM giving a total of 16GB of RAM.

This made another noticable difference in overall performance of all servers, and RAM is so cheap now, wish the 4GB chips were more readily available, would of put in 32GB if I could.

Transfer from physical to virtual was very simple, I could not believe how easy it was.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: mrbiggles

The only virtualization software I have used so far is MS's Virtual PC 2007 which I have on my XP workstation. Can someone give me a quick rundown on VMware? And what is ESX, a certain version of a VMware product?

I really like the idea that recovery of a VM becomes relatively painless, and can even be loaded on different hardware should one have to replace (or upgrade) a server!

It's interesting that at the Vegas conference one Kaseya speaker from UK said running KS on a VM was fine. Then when I asked my Kaseya sales rep more about it when I got back, he said it wasn't officially supported. Maybe someday they'll endorse it after they become more experienced with it...

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: ReedMikel

We are running our KS on VMware ESX.
VMware Workstation is an application that you run in Windows/linux that allow you to run other virtual machines, but you still need an OS to run Workstation on. VMware ESX however, is an OS that runs virtual servers, so there's no OS underneath it.

With regards to our KS setup, we are running an exchange server, sql server, kserver and connectwise on seperate VM's running server 2003.

We experienced some slow downs, which seem to be due to the load put on our sql server, but we increased the ram recently, and that seems to be helping a lot.

As for the comment that support is out the window if you are running KS on a VM, that has not been my experience. I have received a good level of support from Kaseya, and I have mentioned to the support people that I am running everything through ESX.

Scott

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: ssugar

Thanks for the explanation of ESX - makes perfect sense. I guess that's why it's a good bit more expensive that VMware workstation...

Can you share your server's hardware specs with me and about how many Agents you service? Thanks!

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: ReedMikel

Got it... now, anyone looking at doing this with Microsoft Hyper-V?

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: boudj

boudj

Got it... now, anyone looking at doing this with Microsoft Hyper-V?

With a 1.0 product from Microsoft? That's a joke right?

The price is right ($29) but still...

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: misolutions.com