The simple answer is yes. And it will be supported as long as you use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. So will it work in VMWARE? Yes, but it is “un-supported” by Microsoft.
But the real question is should Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr) servers be virtualized?
The answer to this question lies with the virtual server infrastructure being used and the ConfigMgr Site System roles you need virtualized. Input/Output (I/O) performance is one of the biggest limitations of virtual server infrastructures. I had a client change the processor platform to AMD, for the VM host, because the I/O capabilities of the AMD motherboards was four times faster than the same server with the Intel chipset. In that case, when images were downloaded from the virtual servers, the performance of all of the “guest” virtual machines on the host was severely degraded.
The ConfigMgr Primary Site servers require Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft has released a good document with their recommendations around virtualizing SQL Server. If the ConfigMgr Primary Site Server role will be virtualized, I would always recommend using an external SQL server. If the ConfigMgr Primary Site Server is going to be installed on physical server, installing SQL locally will typically produce the best results. A remote SQL database is only suggested if a highly available SQL cluster is required for SQL services.
Virtualizing ConfigMgr Distribution Points can also cause I/O bottlenecks and with image deployment. Imaging from a virtual server should be profiled to determine the number of simultaneous images that can be deployed at one time. Downloading packages and patches from Distribution Points can cause performance bottlenecks as well, but they not as bad as imaging will. Performance testing should be done to determine the performance of virtual machines during package downloads.
So again, the answer is yes ConfigMgr can be virtualized. But careful consideration should be given to SQL and Distribution Point performance.
0 Responses to “Can Configuration Manager Servers be Virtualized?”