Move Web Server to Virtual Machine

Hi everyone,

I hope it's the right place for me to ask this question.
My company tried to virtualize all our servers to virtual machine. Our web server will be the first one moved to virtual machine. I tired to search from google, but it seems not much information for me. Is there anyone done this before and provide some advises? Thank you.

ise2006

 

I've been playing a little with virtual machines recently. I'd suggest a couple of key points to consider:

Which OS you want to use
Both for the underlying system that is supporting the virtual machines, and for OS within each VM.

One of the advantages of using Linux for the underlying system is that you can use a greatly stripped down version of the OS which runs only the services required for the VM support. However, in my opinion VM is also a lot harder to set up on Linux. If you are not familiar with Linux and cannot buy in that expertise, you're probably better looking at the Windows route.

If you only want to host Microsoft OS then MS Virtual PC is easy to set up and use. However, if you want more flexibility (ability to move to a linux core system, or support wide range of OS), then I'd recommend you look at VMWare. Personally if I was putting a system into production, I'd probably go the VMWare route as it is a more mature product with a lot of dedicated support options. If you have a reasonable amount of Linux knowledge then Xen is another option worth considering.

Network
You need to think about how your virtual system will connect to the network. You can create a separate virtual network and then use NAT to connect this to your main network. This would have advantages if this is a test or training network.

However, if you are providing services from the virtual machines then you would be better off bridging your network connections. In this system your network card is multihosting (supporting multiple IP addresses) with each virtual machine getting its own address.

So it is important that you get the right virtual network config from the start.

Loads of RAM and multiple CPUs
You need plenty of RAM (gigs) and multiple processors to get the best out of VM. So you need an OS that will support that. On Windows, that probably means 2003 server.

hardware
The computer is going to be doing a lot of work. Get proper server hardware an a good server network card. This is not a job for that spare desktop PC in the corner.