I would suggest purchasing a server with plenty of power, then practice setting up some NON-PRODUCTION virtual machines. Buy a book, get some training, and play along with the new server.

If you DON'T have time to learn before deploying, bring in a pro.

If you need help "sizing" a server for the virtual machines, let us know more about the virtual machines it will be running and the environment.

Thank you for the response, do you have an idea of what type of a sever(s) I should buy?

If you ask for blind recommendations, you are going to spend way more than you probably should. I could say you should get an R730 with an H730, dual 10-core processors, 396GB of RAM, 8 NIC's, and 4TB of 15K SAS storage, which would probably any scenario you could through at it, but it is probably overkill for what you are doing.

Need more info on what you plan to do before anyone can give you any advice on what to buy.

Thank you, I need a server (physical) that will run about 7 VMs

VM Servers

• CMS Server
• AD Server
• PASTEL Server
• VIP Payroll Server
• ESS Server
• Anti-Virus Server

Also need the appropriate VMware software to purchase to be able to run these servers efficiently including their backups or BCP

Thank you 

If this software is as old as it seems at first glance, you don't need much!

First, VMware is not the only option for virtualization. Hyper-V is, arguably, an equal player in the field with VMware. That choice, however, is up to you.

Second, if you have one of the VM's running as a DC (AD), then you need to make sure you have a SEPARATE PHYSICAL machine running as DC, otherwise, if your virtual host goes down, you lose Internet and network connectivity when you lose DNS and DHCP.

Do you have a server rack? or would you be looking for a tower server (not that you have to have a rack for a rackmount server)?

A dual quad-core server with 64GB RAM and a 4-disk RAID 10 on 10K/15K SAS disks should be way more than you need but still give you some growing room should you decide to modernize your software in the future.

Veeam for backup is a little spendy, but works great with Hyper-V or VMware.

Thanks a lot about these advices.

According to your advice, I need to purchase two physical servers; 1 for DC and other 1 for virtual host. I will purchase a rack as well to mount those two servers.

Between VMware and Hyper-V which one will work much reasonable for this type of solution?

Do they run on top of OS or do they run as OS?

Which version of them will be suitable for my needs?

Thank you
Kakaza

Thanks a lot, at least I have an idea of where to start.

So you saying VMware is free despite the number of servers you want to configure?  

Regards
Kakaza