How to configure the server for greater reliability?

Question

linux

Good afternoon.
Bought a server ~2008. release.
I would like to make it as reliable as possible.
What I understand by this:
1) Decoupling the system from iron (virtualization). The server goes down, re-plugged the disks into another machine - everything worked.
2) RAID - a disk failed, a new one was inserted, the data was synchronized.
3) Easy maintenance. If suddenly such a situation happens that I leave my current place of work, then the employee who came to my place could quickly figure it out.
Basically I have questions on the first 2 points:
2. Unfortunately, there is no hardware edition in the server and it is not possible to buy at the moment, you can only make a fake or software one. As far as I understand, a fake raid is highly discouraged. Thus, the software remains.
1. Virtualization. There are a lot of questions here, although I have read about it. When I decided on what to raise virtualization, I settled on vmware esxi (it's good that there is a free license). But when I almost got to migrating AD to a new server, I found out to my chagrin that vmware does not support either fake raid or software.
Hence the questions.
Which virtualization tool is better to install? I have settled on KVM for now, but will hyper-v understand the file from kvm? And how will the hasp key work? Will it understand a disk (iron) that was created under hyper-v? Under Windows, I know that you take the disk offline and you can attach it to hyper-v. How about KVM?
There is an article on the wiki about Microsoft Hyper-V Server, but I have not come across it at all. Does it work in much the same way as vmware? Will it work if the disks are transferred to a completely different machine? For example, there was a server on Intel, but did it become a stationary PC on AMD?
Yes, it would be possible to set up a test bench and test everything on it and get answers to your questions, but unfortunately, due to the fact that I did not see that vmware does not support software raid, I lost a lot of time, and the current server can no longer withstand .
And just in case, what will stand:
OS - Win2k12
Exchange
AD
DNS
DHCP
file 1C on SSD.

Answer 1

iron raid rarely falls under the description "changed the screw and everything started" =D. usually "changed the screw and turned gray".
but for the rest there is little that can be said. vmvar ... minimizing the roles of virtual machines. backup of both the virtual machines themselves .. and data or configs. make a backup by third-party means. and you will be
happy hypervi alas .. does not support usb port forwarding ... alas .............................. alas

Answer 2

1) software raid! RAID-10 is better
2) KVM + (qcow2 or LVM) - I'm for qcow2 (!!!), since there is no performance degradation after snapshots, and it doesn't lag behind at all (even a little faster) from LVM.
3) in KVM, you can forward almost everything. I did not forward the USB ports themselves, but individual USB devices (flash drives, keys, cameras, etc.) by ID - all the time.
4) For everything to work well on windows, you need to install virtio drivers, since they are there.
5) unlike EXSI, it is much more pleasant to work from the command line.
6) for management, you can put https://www.webvirtmgr.net/
Ask, I have tried a lot of options with KVM for a long time, up to forwarding SR-IOV equipment.
Well, if you want without straining and beautiful -https://www.proxmox.com/en/ - distribution kit all-in-wonder :-) This is if you don't want to raise and control everything yourself.
PS. Right now on one of the servers.

[email protected]:~$ virsh list --all
 ID Имя               Статус
----------------------------------
  1 asterisk-new         работает
  2 services             работает
  3 mongodb              работает
  4 win7                 работает
  5 transcoder           работает
  - distribs             выключен
  - transcoder-i14       выключен
  - ubuntu-base-i686     выключен
  - ubuntu-base-x64      выключен

[email protected]:~$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md127 : active raid1 sdc1[0] sdb1[1]
      3906885440 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: <none>

Answer 3

In general, judging by the questions, you should not virtualize your product right now. Practice on the cats first. Rent some IaaS for experiments and try to do what you want, you will immediately understand all the rake.

Answer 4

debian stable, kvm, on the management side - virt-manager.
Raids - only one (sorry, but it is unlikely that you have the hands to collect a ten that has gone crazy - I have never succeeded), only software.
It is possible to twist under Windows, hyper-v only then, and not kvm.
KVM vs hyper-v is a matter of your personal convenience, the task is neither a drop nor a highload.
The only thing that is more convenient with nixes is that they are easier to carry between hardware. Plug disks, grub-install with Live-cd and this is usually sufficient if the disks are plugged in in the correct order.