Building a Windows Server 2008 R2 Demo –Part 1

Artikel
03/10/2009

So I am in the process of building up a new demo environment and I thought I would I build a series of blog posts related to the build, troubles, etc so when you need to do the same you might avoid some of the pain. The goal in building this environment is two folded:

1. Personal knowledge – the great part of my job is the requirement to play with new technology, mostly Microsoft but also from other vendors.
2. Partner Training – The major part of my role is to inform Microsoft Partner organizations of current and future technologies. The best way to do this is hands on with a live demo as opposed to through PowerPoint or click through web demos, as a result I need to be able to show a wide variety of products.

With that in mind, I am setting out to build a Windows Server 2008 R2 demo that will allow me to showcase Hyper-V Live Migrations, and the new BranchCache and DirectAccess features for Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 client. At the same time I will have a series of VM’s built on top of these base servers to showcase things like Windows Small Business Server 2008, Essential Business Server 2008, Exchange 2007, System Center as a whole (SCCM, SCOM, SCVMM, DPM), SharePoint 2007 and the related BI tools. All of these demos will be built from the ground up with a new domain (mydemoco.ie) plus some related domains for the SBS and EBS installations.

From a technology perspective, I will have 2 – Dell 2900 series servers with 32 gig of RAM and dual quad core 3.0 GHZ processors in each. These servers will be connected to an older HP Storageworks SAN with a couple of trays of 72 gig drives that total out to a couple of TB of disk. I have a third server that will be running VMware ESX server……that is right VMware will be part of the demo which leads to the 4th server running System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage both the ESX and Hyper-V.

MyDemoCo.ie

So with that in mind over the next number of weeks I will blog on the building of this solution as a whole. To date I racked the hardware and installed the fibre cards in the 1 Dell server and loaded W2K8R2. I am having an HP tech from Clarity come in and work with me on the SAN as it has not been used for a year or so and needs to be patched, etc.

I have also included a couple of documents I am currently reading as bed time reading on DirectAccess and BranchCache that outline how to build a demo for these great new features of Windows Server 2oo8 R2.

DirectAccess Early Adopter's Guide

This guide introduces DirectAccess concepts, defines new terms, explains requirements for installation, discusses how to design DirectAccess architecture, and then steps you through installation and deployment.

BranchCache Early Adopter's Guide

Introduces BranchCache, a new feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that reduces WAN link utilization and improves application responsiveness.

Cheers