How can I use virtualization in my new network

[Ric_]

I feel like I should know more about this conf', where, when, and how do we book?

Is the whole conf' aimed at virtualisation tech or just the section you're doing?

Cheers,

Only my section is on virtualisation... there will be other stuff too.

By the end of the Easter break we should have the full details for you all and a lovely booking form - this will give you over a month to work out travel arrangements and accomodation.

[DMcCoy]

I will be giving an overview of virtualisation technologies and its uses at the May conference - not long to go now

Although I would agree with tmcd35 about consolidation, 'high availability' (HA) is also a top reason for virtualising servers. For instance, your current DC explodes in a ball of flames... you need to order a new server, set it up, test it and then make it live. With virtualisation, you automagically failover to a second box.

We don't actually use HA, having only a VMware standard+vmotion license.

There are lots of other reasons though:

Templates
Hardware independence for servers
Server Maintenance (bios updates and patches etc)
Multiple OS types on a single machine
Important roles spread out to reduce impact of patching/reboots of VMs

To instantly fail over (not just automatically start on another server) without service interruption you would still need something like MS clustering etc.

I've been reading up on Microsoft's solution to the lack of a cluster file system for R2, and what I've read makes me highly sceptical about R2s Hyper-V implementation, which is a shame as I would like to move to it when I finally have servers that support it!

[Theblacksheep]

To instantly fail over (not just automatically start on another server) without service interruption you would still need something like MS clustering etc.

I've been reading up on Microsoft's solution to the lack of a cluster file system for R2, and what I've read makes me highly sceptical about R2s Hyper-V implementation, which is a shame as I would like to move to it when I finally have servers that support it!

In ESX 4 (which I think is due to release in two weeks), hey, people are talking about MS features that wont be available for a year, so a few weeks is also ok! There a new feature called VM lockstep where two VMs run at the same time, if one fails the other becomes the live copy. I'm not sure at which level the service get introduced though.

I'd like to add that DRS and power managment is another quite important VM feature, not top of the list, that is missing from the MS implemention. Dynamic filtering of where to start VMs in the event of failure or in the case of hot cloning for VDIs, starting and moving the VMs around host depending on load. Even moving VMs to one host at night when load is low and shutting down other hosts for power saving/maintenance.

Moving storage while the machines are live is also a pretty good feature.

Transparent page file sharing and ISO instancing are another two examples that are not too important when you dont have it, but add a little extra to server and space consolidation when you do.



Yet another disk died on our RM exchange server the other night, so I P2V it... increased the C drive space from 8GB (pathetic) to 16 and it was running again in 6 hours.

[superfletch]

By the end of the Easter break we should have the full details for you all and a lovely booking form - this will give you over a month to work out travel arrangements and accomodation.

Any info on those dates available yet?

Cheers,

[SpuffMonkey]

In both cases both hosts need access to the volume the VM is stored on - either NFS/SMB share or SAN LUN via a clustered file system.

As someone who is just about to dip their toe in this somewhat muddy pond - what's considered the best way of locating the VMs - do you run ESXi on the physical server and keep the VMs on the SAN? Or run ESXi & the VMs on the physical server, but locate your data/backups on the SAN? Be interested to hear what people do.

[tmcd35]

The VM's belong on the SAN. The VMFS formatted LUN that the VM's are stored on should be visable by all of your ESX/ESXi servers. This way, If one of the servers are taken out of action for a while, all the VM's normally controlled by that server can be quickly and easily restarted on any other server, if memory and processor allocation allow.

For this reason I don't normally recommend, in day to day use, provisioning more than <number of ESX/ESXi Servers - 1>/<number of ESX/ESXi servers> of the total capacity of each server.

So if you have 3 servers - you'll use 2/3rds of their total capacity. If you have 4 servers it'd be 3/4 of the servers capacity used. This way if 1 server goes down you are more than likely to have the space accross the other servers to run the effected VM's.