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I would like to ask you guys, who already done some Hyper-V implementation if it's good idea to use this solution for set-up a small company infrastructure.

The idea is to have 1 physical server (2 processors, 32gb ram) and license for Server 2012 Standard + Exchange 2013 Standard. I'm aware of recommendations not to install Exchange on a DC and that's why I prefer to install 2 hosts (DC and Exchange) on Hyper-V server.

What is not clear is Hyper-V set-up on the server: Should this be Server 2012 Core or Hyper-V can be installed on Full featured (with GUI) sever? What should I be aware of in terms of hardware set-up? Is there any guidelines/best practice for this scenario?

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  • Thank you for a quick answer. You are right - it's all we have now, but I believe it's not so bad for start-up. The original plan was to go for SBS where all required services are integrated, but as we will have up to 30 users it's no longer an option for us. As from your experience, can you recommend any resources/guides to study before our real implementation?
    – Bororo
    Jul 23, 2013 at 12:49
  • I hate making recommendations here and worse when I don't know the full setup, but you should also consider VPS/O365/Azure/etc.
    – TheCleaner
    Jul 23, 2013 at 13:16
  • possible duplicate of Can you help me with my capacity planning?
    – mfinni
    Jul 23, 2013 at 13:27
  • 3
    I wish we had a canonical question called "Can you help me understand how many of the things Microsoft makes possible that are a bad idea". That would be much closer match than capacity-planning.
    – Warren P
    Jul 23, 2013 at 14:01
  • @RyanRies you should make your comment an answer.
    – longneck
    Jul 23, 2013 at 14:05

3 Answers 3

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Whether it's a "good choice" is, I think, mostly subjective. I think my answer/opinion would be something like, "well, if that's all you have, you can technically make it work. I would not consider it an ideal situation, but I would consider it better than installing the DC and Exchange on the same OS instance."

Should this be Server 2012 Core on can be installed on Full featured (with GUI) server?

Depends on what you think your administrators can handle. There is nothing in this scope that Server Core cannot handle. But you need to know plenty of Powershell and have RSAT installed on a remote machine to effectively manage Server Core.

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In my opinion its a sort of good choice. However, I'm not convinced that you need Hyper-V Server 2012 for this (Bare metal). Due to licensing, in your case its better to run hyper-v on Windows 2012 Std. Since you are allowed to run 2 windows 2012 std guest hosts on your physical machine, you can actually use it as a file server or maybe even a domain controller. Then you still have the option to install 2 VM's with windows 2012 std with the same license to install a DC and exchange 2013.

In any case, I would certainly look into buying another similar machine so you can cluster the physical host. If you buy a 3rth, you don't even need a file share withness. But that will triple your licensing costs and since your clustering the VM's (floating on the cluster nodes) you still can have only 2 vm machines running on that cluster. But its a good failover alternative. Actually Exchange is designed to work in a clustered vm enviroment.

Hope this helps.

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  • Domain controller any hyper-v on the same bare metal install? No, bad idea.
    – longneck
    Jul 23, 2013 at 13:51
  • As I mentioned before, it's all I have for now. Our budget is limited and because of SBS successor (2012 Essentials) already overspent (licence for 2012 Std and MSX 2013 Std. for 35 users) so buying another hardware is not an option for us. Also I would like to keep our systems independent so will try to avoid using Hyper-V server as DC or F&P server.
    – Bororo
    Jul 23, 2013 at 14:08
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It is not a good idea because it is nesting two critical pieces of your network infrastructure inside each other, in a place that may make it harder to get out of some failure modes.

I would prefer even to run a domain controller on a small inexpensive desktop PC before I would run my primary domain controller inside Hyper-V. Why? Because your actual probability of some failure interrupting access to your Primary Domain Controller is higher.

Things to watch out for:

  1. Using Hyper-V virtualized networking has not been completely reliable when I have tested it with a domain controller, especially when the outer physical PC has only a single ethernet port and you use the Hyper V Virtual Ethernet Adaptor and the virtual networks segments. If you really must use a single box, you really MUST invest $20 in a second pci-E ethernet card.

  2. Expect and watch for disk bandwidth issues if you try this.

I wouldn't even try it.

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  • I wish I can buy something like Small Business Server 2013 (DC,MSX,F&P included) and install it on one piece of HW, but I can't as it is not available anymore. You are saying I'm going to nest 2 critical boxes, but I said I will have Windows Server 2012 Standard with Hyper-V role installed on the box and 2 virtual machines inside (DC and MSX). We are still considering this scenario better than installing Windows 2012 Standard as DC + Exchange 2013 on the same box e.g. it's easier to recover virtual machines than to install DC or MSX from scratch.
    – Bororo
    Jul 23, 2013 at 16:39
  • It's not available anymore because it was crap! Remember that you hardly have to recover a primary domain controller or a secondary domain controller if that's all they are. When they fail, you just pull it out, elevate the other one, add another box, and you continue on. Recovery of a VM is easy, but recovery of that whole big box-o-goodies you're building on Hyper-V may not be so easy. Primary and Secondary domain controllers should both be separate boxes.
    – Warren P
    Jul 25, 2013 at 16:43

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