Combine servers or make one server for each service?

Hardware Server
1

Hi,
i´m running a DELL T20 Server with Xeon E3-1225v3 and 32 GB RAM with ESXi.

There is use some virtual machines.

1x ubuntu server with openhab (ubuntu 16.04. lts server without gui)
1x windows 10 for remote desktop
1x FreeNAS as Storage

Now i want to install some more services, like asterisk, mySQL-Server and some more small servers for using with openhab.

What would you advise me to do? Install a small linux virtual machine for each service or combine all on one virtual machine?

The serves would mostly be in idel all the day. For example there is not much to for asterisk, only 1 phone number and 1 phone in a private home. Plex server maybe watch a film on the evening on 1 tv, and so on…

Would it be better to make a small virtual machine for each service? So i can start/stop any service without influence the other services/servers?

2

I’ve got a Pi running OH, Mosquitto, RC Switch and also acting as a media share to cast music to airplay devices. As these are opensource projects with updates coming through, I can see a great benefit to being able to update one software package, knowing it’s not going to cause the others to become potentially unavailable when an upgrade goes south.

I’m also considering porting to my HP server and using Docker so I can have proper containers for each use-case.

So yes, in my view, a server per service would be helpful, but keeping track of what is where might become tricky.

3

I made VMs separated for functions.

  • TV (tvheadend and emby … not much different to plex)
  • Mysql/Web (apache + mysql)
  • OpenVPN
    etc.

Then there is no problem with working on my webserver without disturbing my wife at watching tv :wink:
I would look at the services wich are working together and then make vms for these services.

4

Maybe you should think about docker images. I am currently moving from several raspi instalaltion to some docker images on may NAS systeme. just started with influxdb and Grafana, mosquitto will follow. I thin general the approach to separate by function or areas like automation, multi media, … is not ab bad idea.

Because i often change things i like things separated.

Thomas