What to install on blades chasis...

Recently I asked for more responsibilities, since I been studying and getting certified. Throughout the conversation, they decided to give me a project to turn this old chassis of ours into something new and useful. Of course I'm excited.

I told them I would make it into a Failover cluster using our San as storage. Then utilize the remaining space for a DFS IT Share with one namespace. All is great. Till he said, What else can we use the blades for. I can think of two more things like IPAM and Volume Activation Server both things we don't have.

The question is... What else can I do?

This project is basically a way to prove myself to them and gain experience in a real world environment.

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Comments

rockstar81

What spec are the blades and how many? What kind of storage are you using and how are you connecting to it?

jahaziel

Honestly, I'm thinking more of the role of services or free software that will improve my company. We already have SCCM, WDS, Exchange 2013. Pretty much everything expect probably monitoring software in a way. I though of deploying MDT to streamline the creation of images.

alias454

Volume Activation Server, is that the same as KMS? What about virtualization using Hyper-V or VMware?

jahaziel

Its actually Volume Activation Services and yes its the same thing. We use Hyper V. So I'll be creating a Hyper V failover cluster.

kriscamaro68

If you already have SCCM they why setup MDT seperate? Integrate Windows deployment with SCCM as MDT is a part of it already but you can have it be an all in one solution. Also if you are setting up a Hyper-V cluster then look at VMM to manage that cluster. Also look at Operations Manager to monitor it. You could also look and setting up DFS. If you have bitlocker in your organization then look at setting up MBAM. If you don't use any type of drive encryption then look at implementing bitlocker. If you don't already setup a 2012R2 print Server. If you have MSSQL boxes that are old then move those over to the cluster as well. I run 4 different MSSQL servers in my cluster without issue granted we have 10GB back to the San per blade. Setup App Controller for self-service VM creation. That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Good luck with the project. Setting up Failover clusters is a lot of fun. (I am not joking I really like it)

jahaziel

I enjoy it too. I done it in my own lab environment. Enjoy every process of it. I don't think we have MDT integrated with sccm. I was thinking the same thing today. We already have servers running sql and many other services. I believe this project is to help automate things more and also they want to see what I can do.