Virtualisation

[alan-d]

We are looking at Virtualisation over the next couple of years and so far the options for hardware and software open to us are huge.

 

Does anyone have, or a link to, a check list of the process of going from a normal vanilla setup to a virtual setup?

 

I'm looking into hardware requirements so a checklist of kit I should have\look at

 

A checklist of software requirements and possible licences. We intend to stay a MS site (For now anyway )

 

A checklist to go through when transfering from the real world to the virtual one.

 

A general laymans guide would be useful, something I can use to explain to SMT etc.

 

I know I'm being vague on detail, but vague is as far as we have got I am speaking to some suppliers before the xmas break but a heads up on the process would be helpful.

 

Any help\pointers would be appreciated.

[Guest Guest]

All processing nodes must be same/similar. This mean you really want to be looking at latest gen stuff or by the time you come to upgrade you wont be able to get hold of the kit.

 

SAN switch, be it FC or just a good gigabit/10gb ethernet. Plus 1 spare/forming redundant routes

 

2 SANs for failover/high availibility. You dont want all your servers going down because of 1 failure

 

Beefy enough UPS for the same reason as above.

 

Backup solution which is suited to virtualisation.

 

 

Software you've basically got;

 

Microsoft HyperV - pretty much free to education, but very new to the game.

 

Citrix Xen - From free to rather expensive depending on feature. Mature enough. i persoanally use this product and have live migration, snapshot backups, etc, on the free version.

 

VmWare - most mature but also most expensive. The free version (at last check) gives you less features than Xen free. Big daddy of virtualisation.

 

 

Then you have the likes of opensource Xen and openvz.

[Ric_]

Citrix Xen - From free to rather expensive depending on feature. Mature enough. i persoanally use this product and have live migration, snapshot backups, etc, on the free version.

 

The paid for features are only a few hundred pounds a box (that's per piece of tin - none of this stupid per two physical processor nonsense that VMWare uses!).

 

As j17sparky says though, all the important features are available for free with XenServer (Windows management console, live migration, snapshots, etc.) and you only need 'Essentials' if you want HR, capacity management, etc.

 

Hyper-V is becoming a lot more mature and, if you're running Windows VMs, you've basically paid for it anyway. The problems are that there isn't really live migration (you need to fiddle about with clustering IIRC) and to get a nice management console you will need SCVM.

 

Anybody that wants to see a virtualisation implementation is welcome to come for a jolly... we have rather good food too

[Abaddon]

As above, if anyone wants to see a VMWare farm running a virtual Citrix Farm of 20 servers, plus about 10 or so others, including Exchange and SIMS etc, and is close(ish) to Hampton, you're more than welcome.

 

ps.. we also have a fully functioning Citrix Provisioning system, for network boots of all our IT Suites. Happy to show this as well.

Edited November 17, 2009 by Abaddon

[mb2k01]

Although I'm quite new to this world myself, as nobody has mentioned it so far I'll jump in with a comment on Hyper-V.

 

There are some mentions above of the paid for extras associated with the other virtualisation flavours. If you are on a Microsoft Schools Agreement then Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 Datacentre is a viable option. The functions that would give you mirror and sometimes surpass the feature sets available in the paid for extras of other VM flavours. (E.G. Live migration from one VM server to another)

[tmcd35]

Just following on from the last post. Windows Datacenter is a pretty good deal for edu. About £150 per processor. You can run as meny VM's as you like. Yes Hyper-V is free with Windows Server, but if you want to use VMWare/Xen then Datacenter is still a good deal.