List of bare minimum services needed to run WCF, SQL Server 2008 and IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 box

Question

List of bare minimum services needed to run WCF, SQL Server 2008 and IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 box

Situation

We provide Finance products on Windows Platforms.

We are migrating our technology stack from Windows 2003(SQL Server 2005,Remoting,IIS 5/6) to Window 2008(SQL Server 2008,WCF,IIS 7/7.5)

We need 3 environment for each customer (1 for live and 1 for RND and 1 for testing team)

Problem

As One VM footprint[(Virtual Machine) with Windows 2008 R2+SQL Server 2008 R2+IIS7 +Crystal Report Server+MS Office 2010 +All Patches] = 14GB

So total space needed = 14*3 *n where n is number of clients we have

As budget is limited so we have thinking to run each box with bare minimum services needed for running required platforms

Question

1) What are bare minimum services needed to run WCF, SQL Server 2008 and IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 box.

2) To reduce VM footprint we are also thinking to use App V clients in that case Any Problems any body facing/faced using App V clients running WCF Clients from Hyper V Windows 2008 R2 boxes. (clients needs some access to registry)

EDIT: After @TomTom pointed out I looked at my one VM and realised It also have MS Office 2010 and Crystal Reports Server X1 R2.

Answer 1

As One VM footprint[(Virtual Machine) with Windows 2008 R2+SQL Server 2008 R2+IIS7] = 14GB

No. Point. I dont know what carappy virtualization you use, but I run that on less than 4.

So total space needed = 14*3 *n where n is number of clients we have

Be smarter.

• Do NOT put SQL Server on the VM, have one central SQL Server. There is no need to have one per virtual machine, they can happily churn fom a number of larger sql server instances. There is absolutely no need every client gets 3 copies of SQL Server.

• Use dynamic memory allocation. Static only for SQL Server based databases.

You know without reconfiguration SQL Sever will grow, always, to use as much memory as makes sense for caching which DOES NOT WORK IN VIRTUALIZATION. Hardcode your sql servers to a sensible value and they will deal with it.