VMware/Virtual servers?

[flashsnaps]

I've heard of VMware before but not really thought of the idea of giving it a go until now. The thought of clearing all the servers out & virtualising it sounds good to me!

 

I am novice, can someone explain the basic principle. I understand you have 1 main server, & you can run endless virtual ones from it? How is it possible to store so much data, where is it stored?

 

Thank You

[Geoff]

You use a SAN.

[Uraken]

you basic premise is spot on, you build a fairly high spec server, install O/S and SP's drivers etc then install vmware or MS virtual server and then you can add any number of servers inside flat files, which can then me moved around etc.

the data is stored in virtual hard drives, which increases the size of the virtual machine or you can use networked drives etc.

your best bet (picture paints a thousand words) download and install and play about, you will soon get the hang of it.

 

At its most complex you can virtualise current physical servers and install something like esx and manage the lot via a web browser.

[webman]

A properly-configured Linux server as the host OS will use less resources than Windows and lead to better VMWare guest OS performance.

[flashsnaps]

you basic premise is spot on, you build a fairly high spec server, install O/S and SP's drivers etc then install vmware or MS virtual server and then you can add any number of servers inside flat files, which can then me moved around etc.

the data is stored in virtual hard drives, which increases the size of the virtual machine or you can use networked drives etc.

your best bet (picture paints a thousand words) download and install and play about, you will soon get the hang of it.

 

At its most complex you can virtualise current physical servers and install something like esx and manage the lot via a web browser.

Thanks

 

Virtual harddrives? The space available is endless then?

[DMcCoy]

A properly-configured Linux server as the host OS will use less resources than Windows and lead to better VMWare guest OS performance.

 

Numbers please

 

Or you could remove linux from the equation too with ESX

[strawberry]

Thanks

 

Virtual harddrives? The space available is endless then?

 

no , the virtual machines each take a share of the host computer be it hard drive space, ram, or processor.

 

Whats good about virtual machines is how independent the services become from the hardware. So for isnance if you had 2 servers now and one went down u'd be stuck, with virtual machines you'd move the file to another server, fire it up and your server would be ready to go.

[DMcCoy]

Thanks

 

Virtual harddrives? The space available is endless then?

 

No, you are just partitioning your normal server to make use of free capacity. It's not magic

 

It's useful for consolidation and management, if you don't already have enough hardware capacity it's not going to help at all.

[webman]

Obviously ESX (plus SAN) would be the best "money-no-object" option

 

I can't lay my hands on figures at the moment but it goes without saying that possibility of running a host operating system (eg Linux) without a wasteful GUI, antivirus software, automatic reboots after updates without warning, and being able to scale it down to the bare minimum will be a great advantage to running virtual machines. Linux also has it's support of many suitable filesystems on its side whereas Windows has ...... FAT or NTFS

[dezt]

I may be looking at server virtualization in the future, would the best course of action be to build a big server up with a beefy processor, or two, add lots of RAM and masive hard drive space.

 

Probably 2 x dual or quad core xeons, 4Gb Ram and 1Tb hard drive space, would that be good enough for about 4 servers, maybe 6?

[strawberry]

dezt, might be worth getting 2 servers so you have some rudundcy. Best suggestion is get 2 of the servers ict-direct are doing. You'll also need to get some serious backup sorted out, as if your hdd fails in a server you might stand to lose upto 4 servers!.

[dan400007]

A couple of people are talking about using beefy processors. Before you do look at what virtual hosts you want to be running.

 

For example I'm looking at virtualizing a fair few servers and I know that several of them are running applications that are in effect file servers and use very little processing power. The random access time of the RAM, HDD and network bandwidth are more important.

 

As with all school ICT, it comes down to budgets and if you're going to use a SAN to host the virtual harddrives.

 

MS also provide a whitepaper detailing the trade offs about running your DCs in a virtual environment.

[dhicks]

Probably 2 x dual or quad core xeons, 4Gb Ram and 1Tb hard drive space, would that be good enough for about 4 servers, maybe 6?

 

It depends what you're going to do on each of the virtual machines. We bought a server of similar specification from Dell (just less than £2000) to run our thin clients, very similar to virtual machines. It runs 20+ thin clients simultaneously.

 

--

David Hicks

[Gatt]

can either VMWare or Virtual Server be run on Windows 2008 yet?

[dan400007]

Haven't tried.

 

Does anyone know if there is going to be any price difference between Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Server 2008 withOUT Hyper-V? I believe they have different SKUs so I'm guessing there will be. Also since we're talking about using possibly more than 4Gb RAM you can use Server 2008 x64 STD to with upto 32Gb.

[eejit]

I "believe" that Hyper-V is a free download which will be available as a download within 180 days of the official RTW.

[eejit]

MS also provide a whitepaper detailing the trade offs about running your DCs in a virtual environment.

 

Do you have a link to that at all?

[eejit]

With regard to Virtualization hardware - have people bought any yet? If so, what are you using?

 

I presume that you have two virtual servers in case one fails plus a SAN plus backup.

 

Also, I've been told not to virtualize SQL products, but I know for a fact that some people are, so how has that gone?

[Geoff]

BTW, just a heads up. Hyper-V is broken for non-US locales in W2k8 Server RTM.

 

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/02/11/hyper_v_localization/

[eejit]

Oh, I heard that it wasn't included at all. I wonder if people are installing the BETA on it?

[CyberNerd]

Also, I've been told not to virtualize SQL products, but I know for a fact that some people are, so how has that gone?

 

It's been fine here on an old installation of CMIS/SQL.

The rule of thumb is that if the server is very high load, (actually look and see if it is) esp lots of disk read/writes then it's not an ideal candidate for virtualisation.

[Lee_K_81]

With regard to Virtualization hardware - have people bought any yet? If so, what are you using?

 

I have a couple of virtual servers. Not really pushing the boat out with them yet. One is hosting Nagios on Ubuntu. Another is running a server for our IT dept. Basically hosting fireworks helpdesk, Altiris and OpenFire. I'm going to gradually push the limits of our host server to see how much i can run and see if i can de-commision any of our other servers.

 

 

I presume that you have two virtual servers in case one fails plus a SAN plus backup.

You dont necessarily need a second server set up, you could move your Virtual servers onto any machine(s) with VMWare on it. I.e. your Beefy Server goes bang, you could move the images of your virtual machines onto several workstations as a short-term measure.

You dont *need* a SAN, but if you dont use one be aware that your Virtual Servers Storage is dependant on your hosts storage. A SAN would certainly help.

 

Backup is essential. Best option is to be able to back up the virtual servers via the host rather than individually. This would mean you could be back up and running in a matter of minutes.

 

Also, I've been told not to virtualize SQL products, but I know for a fact that some people are, so how has that gone?

SQL products will be very memory intensive as well as having lots of disk access. If you are using a SAN the disk space / access isnt really an issue. If it's a beefy server and you can allocate several GB of RAM and 2 virtual CPUs, to the Virtual Server it should cope.

[eejit]

Cheers Lee, that was a great post.

[dan400007]

Here the whitepaper from MS on running DCs in a virtual env. Its based on Virtual Server 2005 but the principals apply to all.

DC on Virtual Server.pdf

[Lee_K_81]

Cheers Lee, that was a great post.

 

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