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Topic starter
I am curious as to what people are using for their test environments. I can't imagine that one would be required to have all the same equipment and servers as our live environment. However, our IT team seems to think so.
Thoughts?
Posted : April 9, 2014 7:11 am
They should be able to make whatever you/they need happen in a VM environment.
Posted : April 9, 2014 9:50 am
Scott Forest said:
I am curious as to what people are using for their test environments. I can't imagine that one would be required to have all the same equipment and servers as our live environment. However, our IT team seems to think so.
Thoughts?
I have a VMWare infrastructure in place so that we can test on the same hardware which is used in production. I installed a blade chassis last year and bought one extra blade to use for testing. It doesn't have the HA or vMotion component but it is not necessary for testing. There are still some things which can not be tested (plug ins, some interfaces, etc) but for the most part you will get a good idea on how long an upgrade will take and you will also be able to train staff on it if you use a backup of your database to do the test server. By using your production data on a test upgrade you will also find out if there are any issues with your database which you would need to fix before the actual upgrade.
Mike Zavolas
Tallahassee Neurological Clinic
Posted : April 10, 2014 12:29 am
Topic starter
thanks Mike for the info. I will definitely pass it on.
Posted : April 10, 2014 2:10 am
Topic starter
So apparently we don't have a VMware infrastructure...
Posted : April 10, 2014 2:24 am
Scott Forest said:
So apparently we don't have a VMware infrastructure...
You can set up VMWare for free without all of the bells/whistles which is vCenter. Then there is also Microsoft Hyper-V which is also free and is included with Windows Server I believe. The latest iterations of HyperV in Windows Server are really good but you would need some additional hardware in either case. You can use lower tier hardware but it would be slower than your production environment.
Whenever possible I install ESX on any server I use and then set up Virtual Machines in case I ever want to cluster them. It also makes backup of the entire Virtual server possible for quick recovery in a disaster.
You can set up VMWare ESX on workstation-class hardware for your lab. Memory is your friend here; you could get by with 4GB but more is always better.
You should try to get VMWare or Hyper-V into your production environment as you move forward even if you just use the free versions. You will not regret it.
Posted : April 10, 2014 2:53 am
