One of the great things about virtualization on a machine like TECT is that there's ultimately almost infinite flexibility in how you utilize the resources. This becomes really interesting when I start to think about how my data should be organized.
Organization has always been something I love doing, but am bad at. Maybe it's just a good mindless activity, sort of like my version of a video game, but I love collecting little bits of data and then filing them away in folders, watching my collection grow, and then deciding that I have done it wrong and actually all of the little bits of information need to be organized in some other way. Virtualization, then, is great because I can choose how the computers are organized. I can choose, for example, to have a virtual Windows 7 computer for everyday productivity, another for doing development tasks, and yet another as a testbed for things that might destroy the machine I'm using.
To hold all of the information that these virtual desktops (in addition to my physical desktops and laptops) — I can create any number of virtual servers, using any combination of operating systems, although for the sake of a variety of reasons, I am almost universally running Windows Server 2008R2 virtual servers.
Right now, I have four virtual servers prepared, and am going to be using them as a domain controller, file server for home directories, file server for shared information, and an Exchange server, respectively.
I have thought a few times about the correct application of servers for separate purposes. Right now, the best reason I can think of for using so many separate machines for different functions (there are more machines and functions on their way, as it happens) is because I want to, and because there's no better use for the resources. I think that glosses over the fairly important points of "learning" and potentially robustness and scaling. I'm not implementing DFS in virtualization, but if I had a few more TECTs, and/or a few big physical file servers, I see no reason why I wouldn't be splitting everything out.
On the other hand, in a home environment, it's hard to deny that it might be easiest to set up TECT as a single, really high capacity, physical server. Rigs like Small Business Server 2011 make getting started with this arrangement fairly easy, all of the services are set up in a way that Microsoft believes they should be, and by cutting the number of virtual machines I run, and simplifying the way I run them, backups potentially become much easier.
However, I have always been leery of that sort of setup — putting all of my eggs into a single basket, and decent and functional as I'm sure SBS is, I can't help but go "what if the Exchange component blows up? It takes everything with it!" If I the Exchange server is a virtual machine with one core and 4 gigs of ram, instead of a service on the physical machine, a runaway Exchange server doesn't bring down everything else on the machine.
Likewise, splitting the data of home directory information, laptop backups, and shared media data means that if one of those OS installations kicks the bucket, not everything is gone. But Cory, you're asking, don't you run backups? — Sure, but why restore everything in my whole computing environment every time a single server has a hiccup?
I don't know what will happen as I increase TECT's running capacity with more memory and/or a better or second processor, and I don't know what'll happen as we move into the future and start using Windows 8 and Server 2012 for more stuff. It's possible that in a few years I will go "that was a nice run," and ditch virtualization completely, favoring a single server running almost every service.
Hopefully when I do that, I'll have some really big external hard disks available as staging areas.
On one final note: I still haven't decided on a permanent backup strategy for TECT. Topham is still running, although I haven't got any backup software or backup plans configured right now, while I consider whether or not I even want to mess with Topham as a backup destination for TECT, given that TECT has much more disk space available than Topham does, and by their very nature, backups require more space than the source.