I'm gearing up to set up a server environment featuring around 20 Windows virtual machines, which I expect to support 60-70 concurrent users. The expected workload is primarily light to moderate—mostly standard Office applications, web browsing, and some small business tools.
Here's what I'm planning for hardware:
- 2x AMD EPYC 7763 CPUs
- 1 TB of RAM
- 8x U.2 SSDs (2 TB each)
Do you think this configuration is adequate, or should I be looking to upgrade aspects like CPU, RAM, storage, or IOPS? I'd really appreciate your insights or any experiences you've had with similar setups!
To clarify, the environment will include 3 RDP servers with a maximum of 10 users each, 3 file servers, and several standalone Windows 11 VMs, all accessed through a VPN.
3 Answers
Make sure your network can handle this too. A solid setup with adequate bandwidth for those 70 concurrent users is equally important.
Honestly, 1TB of RAM and those high-performance CPUs for light office tasks seems like serious overkill. We run 10 Windows Server VMs with AD supporting 300 concurrent users using older blade servers with just 256GB of RAM. You might want to reassess if you really need that much power for your specific tasks.
That said, I plan to have around 16 VMs, each getting 16GB of RAM, so I thought going big would be safer!
You might also want to consider if this setup is business-critical. Do you have redundancy or failover capabilities planned? Also, how will you handle backups and disaster recovery? It's all part of keeping your setup reliable.
Yes, the most critical VMs will have a backup server. And I'll ensure that there's both internal and external backup.
I'm planning on 2x 1Gb Fiber for the connection, but I'm unsure if I should keep my current UDM Pro for VPN or switch to a dedicated VPN server.