Opendental - Server best practice

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tdong
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Opendental - Server best practice

Post by tdong » Mon Apr 18, 2016 10:58 am

I haven't been here for a while. And I see that many people have questions about office set up with new server/desktop.

My recommendation.

-Workstation just go with any windows 7,10. hardware i recommend surface pro cheapest version. The nice thing about using laptop is that it is portable and it has battery. otherwise any pc will do

-Server setup. before i was using Double-Take (Veems) for mirror and fail over. Now with server 2012, Hyper V is your answer for fail safe.

To save on server hardware cost get two 2 used Dell R710 rackmount with 32gig memory and whatever drive space you need (around $800 to $1000). Get two copy of server 2012 license
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-PowerEdge- ... rkt%3D1%26



-Let assume you bought the R710 with 8 300gig drives. set this up as raid 6 or raid 10.

Server 1
-Partition 100gig for OS and the rest Data (Hyper V). Install host server 2012 with hyper feature. with server 2012 you are allowed to install two hyperv(s) with server 2012 license. Promote this to be a DC (domain controller)
-create one OpendentServer hyperv( Virtual Machine). give it 16gig of ram. 4 virtual cpu, 500gig of space or whatever you need. install server 2012 using the same key. Join the domain

Server 2
-install host server 2012 join the domain
-create a HyperV - second DC (domain controller and join the domain) 8gig ram, 4 cpu, 126gig (default) harddrive.

Launch hyper v management and create replication Opendentserver from server 1 to server 2 and SecondDC from server 2 to server 1. Create snap shot every two hours or whatever you wish. Replication can be set every 2 sec to 10min (server 2012 R2).

-install opendent, database etc in Opendentserver create your normal hourly/daily backup if you want. I also purchase idrive for cloud backup. Yes mysql run great inside hyper v. Been running it for 3 years already. We have Opendental, MySql, and Kodak xray all inside the VM.


install free Veems backup on both host server for backup the entire Hyper V. (if you have idrive account you don't need Veem since it has HyperV backup)

Now you have a very safe opendental setup. Very easy to do a manual fail over. you may lost 5 min work if the main server failed. If you want auto fail over which i don't recommend purchase Veems
Last edited by tdong on Thu Apr 21, 2016 6:46 am, edited 2 times in total.

tdong
Posts: 100
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:16 pm
Contact:

Re: Opendental - Server best practive

Post by tdong » Mon Apr 18, 2016 11:10 am

If you want to keep Opendental images and Xray outside of the VM, you can use DFS and DFS namespace.

What is DFS (distributed file system) let say you have Opendentalimages1 folder on server 1, on server 2 you can create Opendentalimages2 and they both sync in real time. DFS namespace allows you to have a single name Opendentalimages.

sunilg
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 8:05 pm

Re: Opendental - Server best practice

Post by sunilg » Sat Dec 23, 2017 8:10 pm

Hello tdong,

Our crashed, we had normal PC(dell Optiplex 9010) working as server. I was looking to see what server works well and I came across your post. Since its more than a year old, wondering if you had any updated suggestions on server requirements.

Thank you

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