How we tested Microsoft's System Center 2012

We initially attempted to implement System Center 2012 modularly, which is almost impossible, so we used the Unified Installer after reading the salient documents for each module, then installed each module into its own VM, combining SQL Server resources where necessary. We recommend that up to four SQL Server instances may be necessary for protecting all of the modules.

We controlled the test of the modules in our lab, and deployed instances both locally into Dell 1950 servers (two-CPU/eight-core, 12GB memory, lots of disk) connected into a switch, then to our network operations center at nFrame. At nFrame, we housed two HP servers, a DL580 (16-core, 32GB, big disk), a DL585 (16-core, 32GB, big disk), and several other, smaller servers that shared a Compellent SAN system, interconnected with an Extreme switch. In turn, we connected our networks to a Microsoft Azure account for testing VM control.

We exercised the basic functionality of each module against our Windows Servers, and VMware, XenServer and KVM-based hardware using both Windows 7 virtual machines, and Lenovo T520 notebooks (two-core/i5 with 8GB of DRAM and 300GB drives) in a Gigabit Ethernet L2/L3 switched environment.

Return to main test.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

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