Virtualisation IT Stuff

[Supragal]

Hai everyone! I'm currently researching Virtualisation, and although this is a Supra forum, based on past experience I still rate this place as a great go to forum for literally anything!

 

So one for the IT people really...

 

Looking to upgrade a current normal server, makes sense to head towards "The Cloud" but it seems that all of the general release documentation is sales/marketing and therefore obviously intend to lead me to believe that both options are the best, so I guess I'm after real life experience/thoughts/opinions on whether VMware Hypervisor stuff or Microsoft HyperV is the way to go. The differences, the ones that actually matter, whatever really - literally just starting to scratch the surface with this!

 

Any help muchly appreciated

[caseys]

It allllll depends on workload. That would be my first question - what workload are you looking to virtualise?

 

My second question is - Why do you want to do it? Why do you think you *need* to do it?

 

Webservers - cloud/virtual maybe.

 

Database - don't touch it with a bargepole imho.

Fileservers - depends on how quickly you need your data, what availability you need and how secure (most important) it needs to be.

 

Anything with a 24/7 or a near 24/7 do not virtualise outside if you virtualise at all. Performance tracking as well as performance critical workloads will be harder to tune/manage. With either virtualisation product.

 

Going virtual is good if you have a lot of old servers with a very low load, allows consolidation, reduction in costs etc all that nice stuff - but adds complexity of management. Unless you get to the real complex enterprise platforms virtualisation does have it's overheads, complex licensing and you need to do a thorough analysis of if it'll be cost effective in the long term.

 

Don't put anything out on the cloud you can't afford to lose.

[Supragal]

OK, so basically we have our live environment and our test environment. Currently both are on physical. The test environment is stupidly overloaded, like over 80% usage so we need to upgrade and it seems a good time to virtualise, and use the exercise of virtualising test environment as a POC for one day doing live.

 

It's a TINY set up so a real mix of stuff. Current server does backups, test environments, UAT/devlopment, hosts various apps and also databases, code, knowledge base plus probably a few other bits that I've not found yet! Idea is that we are able to split each app out onto it's own VM so we can deal with each one separately (company is growing pretty fast too) There is a need to create test vms that can be used and binned off running several different OS etc.

[Thorin]

Microsoft HyperV can be much more cost effective if you are going to run a lot of VM's. An enterprise license for the host allows you to run unlimited Windows server VM's on that host.

 

VMware is still miles ahead for the management side of things though, and if you're going to have a lot of hosts I'd without question want to be using VMware.

[Supragal]

I can't imagine that we'll hit the limit of what one ESX host can do (I think it's 300 odd?) but I'm yet to look into how the licensing works... I'm pretty sure you can run ESX for free if you're not doing any of the clever stuff that you need vCenter for, I might be making that up though!

[Thorin]

I can't imagine that we'll hit the limit of what one ESX host can do (I think it's 300 odd?) but I'm yet to look into how the licensing works... I'm pretty sure you can run ESX for free if you're not doing any of the clever stuff that you need vCenter for, I might be making that up though!

 

Yeah there's a free version of the ESXi hypervisor.

[ManwithSupra]

I can't imagine that we'll hit the limit of what one ESX host can do (I think it's 300 odd?) but I'm yet to look into how the licensing works... I'm pretty sure you can run ESX for free if you're not doing any of the clever stuff that you need vCenter for, I might be making that up though!

 

ESXi is free and can be downloaded however has very little in the way of managing your VM environment.

 

If you want any level of management you need to be looking at a proper solution using Standard, Enterprise or Enterprise plus (depending on features needed) and vCenter manager (idealy running on a seperate server outside the VM's) along with a method of shared storage (idealy a SAN but a NAS device can be used if budgets constrain) vSphere 5 has another element of licencing now with vRam which is something to bear in mind if you go with a managed solution.

 

I put some vSphere 5 licencing info on the blog I run for work.. http://westcoastsolutions.blogspot.com/2011/09/help-vmware-vsphere-5-licensing.html

[Supragal]

Hmm, so it looks like for the Essentials package you can only have 6 vms per host anyway, unless I'm misunderstanding.

 

I'd love a proper solution with at least 3 servers - 1 for vCenter and 2 ESX hosts, but to put it in perspective, we only have 17 employees in the entire company, so I suspect that justifying the cost for that kind of installation just won't be possible. Currently doing some more research to see if I can find out really how much it will cost. I'll check out that link

[Supragal]

Oh and we're using NAS storage, but actually Storage is my weakest area - in fact I know almost nothing about it!

[ManwithSupra]

I don’t recall a VM limit on essentials? Essentials is ideally suited for organisations that have

The Essentials licencing allows for 3 servers with 2 processors each. The only drawback is that the solutions are "self-contained" which means you cannot be used with other vSphere editions, it’s the same with vCenter essentials (which comes with the essentials bundle) this cannot manage other versions of vSphere, so effectively if you want to expand you would have to manage the two VM area's separately.

[Supragal]

I can't decide if I am especially dim, or if they deliberately make it confusing! I ran through the 'cost calculator' on the vmware site and was looking at the table it produces - attached - I guess I am completely misunderstanding what it is getting at *sigh*

[Supragal]

Oh - and it looks like Hyper-V doesn't support NAS, that could be a deal breaker!

[ManwithSupra]

I can't decide if I am especially dim, or if they deliberately make it confusing! I ran through the 'cost calculator' on the vmware site and was looking at the table it produces - attached - I guess I am completely misunderstanding what it is getting at *sigh*

 

So from that table it shows that you have 2 hosts (servers), each with 9 Virtual machines and 15 applications running on the 9 VM's

[Abz]

Hmm, so it looks like for the Essentials package you can only have 6 vms per host anyway, unless I'm misunderstanding.

 

I'd love a proper solution with at least 3 servers - 1 for vCenter and 2 ESX hosts, but to put it in perspective, we only have 17 employees in the entire company, so I suspect that justifying the cost for that kind of installation just won't be possible. Currently doing some more research to see if I can find out really how much it will cost. I'll check out that link

 

How many applications are you planning on supporting? I understand where you are coming from that it is much easier to manage and work with applications on different servers which is where Virtualisation works best. Could you maybe list what your current infrastructure or estate consists of, might be able to give you a better answer.

 

Also are you planning on keeping any physical servers in the environment?

[creative]

 

HTH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

now I feel really dim reading that but I hope my valid contribution helps you decide!

[caseys]

OK, so basically we have our live environment and our test environment. Currently both are on physical. The test environment is stupidly overloaded, like over 80% usage so we need to upgrade and it seems a good time to virtualise, and use the exercise of virtualising test environment as a POC for one day doing live.

 

It's a TINY set up so a real mix of stuff. Current server does backups, test environments, UAT/devlopment, hosts various apps and also databases, code, knowledge base plus probably a few other bits that I've not found yet! Idea is that we are able to split each app out onto it's own VM so we can deal with each one separately (company is growing pretty fast too) There is a need to create test vms that can be used and binned off running several different OS etc.

 

Backups? Netbackup? VMs would be ideal for crash and burn non-production systems. Databases I'd be a bit more weary of if they are to be retained unless you have a stringent backup policy and also can suffer downtime/recovery time. I would still keep dedicated servers for production data, or at least segregate and have a set of prod-VMs and a set of dev-VMs (also then you have to start worrying about testing new releases of your hypervisor technology etc).

 

You can easily spin up new VMs using storage technologies like snap/clone/flashcopy. Takes us about 3 seconds to 'make' a server, then about 25-30 minutes to get it up and usable.

 

Also haven't they just refreshed vSphere and VMWare in general? (Sorry I don't use VMW or Microsoft, other stuff I use to virtualise).

 

Oh and we're using NAS storage, but actually Storage is my weakest area - in fact I know almost nothing about it!

 

Now that is my forte. SAN storage is probably a bit costly for an SMB though

 

Discussed it with any vendors yet?

[Supragal]

So from that table it shows that you have 2 hosts (servers), each with 9 Virtual machines and 15 applications running on the 9 VM's

 

Oh - I read that as 'max' number of vms per host - is that just a suggestion on how you would configure it for 15 apps or something then?

[Supragal]

How many applications are you planning on supporting? I understand where you are coming from that it is much easier to manage and work with applications on different servers which is where Virtualisation works best. Could you maybe list what your current infrastructure or estate consists of, might be able to give you a better answer.

 

Also are you planning on keeping any physical servers in the environment?

 

I'm working with the figure of 15 apps - waiting for others to get back to me to be able to be exact but that should easily cover it. Actual server wise, forget the live as right now I'm only looking to virtualise the test/dev box - and that currently is all it is - one physical server with EVERYTHING on it. It's maxed out so needs sorting so it seems a good opportunity to virtualise. I guess if the server wasn't struggling all we'd be doing is effectively splitting the apps out into their own virtual servers, but we'll need to increase the performance too - whether than be 1 more powerful server, or adding an additional physical server.

 

Does that help? I am sooo confused

[Supragal]

Backups? Netbackup? VMs would be ideal for crash and burn non-production systems. Databases I'd be a bit more weary of if they are to be retained unless you have a stringent backup policy and also can suffer downtime/recovery time. I would still keep dedicated servers for production data, or at least segregate and have a set of prod-VMs and a set of dev-VMs (also then you have to start worrying about testing new releases of your hypervisor technology etc).

 

You can easily spin up new VMs using storage technologies like snap/clone/flashcopy. Takes us about 3 seconds to 'make' a server, then about 25-30 minutes to get it up and usable.

 

Also haven't they just refreshed vSphere and VMWare in general? (Sorry I don't use VMW or Microsoft, other stuff I use to virtualise).

 

 

 

Now that is my forte. SAN storage is probably a bit costly for an SMB though

 

Discussed it with any vendors yet?

 

For now it's all in test/dev - the DBs used in that environment are backed up too. What makes you so nervous about running DBs on VMs? I was under the impression that loads of places happily did this?

 

Yeah they just released vSphere 5, so I guess we'll go straight to that. I worked at VMware until 31st July, unfortunately not on any of the Virtualization stuff!! Gutted now!! I'm familiar with using it once it's set up, like deploying machines etc but not the scoping/set up/core technology.

 

Now I've said that about NAS storage, that might actually be a slight lie - the test environment might use the physical storage on the server. I will check with the IT guy. (I've only been here 2 weeks BTW, hence not knowing much about the infrastructure yet!)

 

Not discussed with any vendors yet, I want to have a vague idea where we are trying to get to first else it'll all just go over my head!

[Thorin]

Go with free ESXi, and just P2V your existing T&D machines with VMware convertor.

[marc_p]

A few quick questions:

 

a) What does the current enviroment look like(i.e. What servers are you running, how many CPU's, what storage is currently implementated)?

 

b) What systems are you looking to virtualise?

 

c) What is the budget?

[ManwithSupra]

Oh - I read that as 'max' number of vms per host - is that just a suggestion on how you would configure it for 15 apps or something then?

 

Yeah defo, you can run more way more than 9 vm's on a single host.

[Abz]

I'm working with the figure of 15 apps - waiting for others to get back to me to be able to be exact but that should easily cover it. Actual server wise, forget the live as right now I'm only looking to virtualise the test/dev box - and that currently is all it is - one physical server with EVERYTHING on it. It's maxed out so needs sorting so it seems a good opportunity to virtualise. I guess if the server wasn't struggling all we'd be doing is effectively splitting the apps out into their own virtual servers, but we'll need to increase the performance too - whether than be 1 more powerful server, or adding an additional physical server.

 

Does that help? I am sooo confused

Certainly does help! At least I know you are sorting out the test lab

 

I think the main question is what spec the server is which will be handling the virtualisation? It would need to be quite well spec'd to notice an improvement. Do you have a budget for improving the current hardware or are you looking to just improve on what you have?

 

For now it's all in test/dev - the DBs used in that environment are backed up too. What makes you so nervous about running DBs on VMs? I was under the impression that loads of places happily did this?

 

Yeah they just released vSphere 5, so I guess we'll go straight to that. I worked at VMware until 31st July, unfortunately not on any of the Virtualization stuff!! Gutted now!! I'm familiar with using it once it's set up, like deploying machines etc but not the scoping/set up/core technology.

 

Now I've said that about NAS storage, that might actually be a slight lie - the test environment might use the physical storage on the server. I will check with the IT guy. (I've only been here 2 weeks BTW, hence not knowing much about the infrastructure yet!)

 

Not discussed with any vendors yet, I want to have a vague idea where we are trying to get to first else it'll all just go over my head!

We use DB's in a virtual environment (admittingly our SQL expert isn't very keen on it), a number of concerns were raised when this first surfaced years ago but personally apart from a setup where the DB is dynamic I don't see the issue. Though I also take into the account the negative points too.

 

Just a quick understanding of it all:

 

http://www.sentrigo.com/solutions/db-security-and-virtualization

[caseys]

For now it's all in test/dev - the DBs used in that environment are backed up too. What makes you so nervous about running DBs on VMs? I was under the impression that loads of places happily did this?

 

Some places might, the places I've been haven't, at least without a heavy amount of clustering, but as said, depends on your scale/cost/risk really!

 

Yeah they just released vSphere 5, so I guess we'll go straight to that. I worked at VMware until 31st July, unfortunately not on any of the Virtualization stuff!! Gutted now!! I'm familiar with using it once it's set up, like deploying machines etc but not the scoping/set up/core technology.

Ah you escaped the Evil Machine Corporation then eh?

 

Now I've said that about NAS storage, that might actually be a slight lie - the test environment might use the physical storage on the server. I will check with the IT guy. (I've only been here 2 weeks BTW, hence not knowing much about the infrastructure yet!)

 

As VMW isn't my forte I'm not sure how well it can share direct attached disk. NAS is good especially for file level access, but if you get into replication, copies etc SAN is the way forward if budget permits (and imho)

 

Seems many on here are VMW people so get a nice unbiased opinion. Drop me a PM if you want advice on looking at infrastructure from a large scale or any storage stuff.

[Ark]

I suspect from the information already provided, the move to virtualisation is a "me too" scenario for your company - expensive and kinda pointless considering how cheap a load of low end servers are compared with a handful of really powerful, expensive servers. Like cloud, it's trendy right now, but most people find it runs like shit because they under-estimate the actual loadings/costings. Mind you, there are an awful lot of consultancies who will help you get it right, for a fee.