Disaster Recovery and vmware

ashrobbo

ashrobbo

ashrobbo

Associate
Joined
3 May 2009
Posts
805
Hi All,

I am trying to talk my boss into looking at virtualisation. Managed to Load ESXi onto an ML115 and setup a few machines, all is fine and dandy, works but But hes not convinced its worth the risk loading several machines onto the same bit of kit due to 'single point of failure' which i kind of agree with to an extent.

Bit of background as to why im looking at it: we have around 28 servers, most perform 1 task only, usually a simple application, file server, print server, etc.

With all of these servers you can imagine the power usage is insane (mostly dell equipment anything from powervault nas, to poweredge 750/850/1850/2500/2950's) and reducing the power usage by 50% can only make the IT dept look good right?

Now my argument is that the utilisation on these servers are ridiculously low (some barely hit 10% cpu, and 30-40% mem utlization max)

I have suggested vmware to make the most of our hardware, but how do i get around the 'single point of failure' card he keeps drawing?

I think i could reduce our servers by atleast half and still keeping the mission critical DC/Exchange/SQL etc on seperate boxes.

We dont use any types of shared storage (few NAS boxes for backups), purely servers loaded with disks hosting whatever data/application required.

Am i missing something?

Ash
 
should i be looking at the fibre route or gigabit ethernet?

Cost is ALWAYS an issue where I Work, so it needs to be feasible to save the company £££ in the long run.

if the SAN Dies, then what? (cause i know thatll be the response)
 
just saw post above. a bit more info.

Server all run Dual PSU and some sort of RAID protection, we backup each server on a standard rotation to NAS.

If any of the server's died, we could probably restore within a few hours, providing we had the hardware.

My boss's opinion is that virtualization is just a 'buzzword' where as I dont agree. Thanks for responses thus far!
 
Being fairly new in this area, can anybody reccomend any HP kit (or dell) that I can begin looking at? including licences?
i presume i would need something along the lines of

2 x servers
1 x SAN (or server with openfiler as an iscsi target?)
Switches (any particular kind? use procurve atm but majority are the older models)

We are a Small/Medium Business, i would like to budget say £5k? hopefully consolidating 6-7 physical servers into 2 boxes?

Lets forget about High Availability and replication, and i can stick with standard backups, id imagine my boss is just being difficult tbh.
 
isn't it technically possible to have 3 servers, one being loaded with openfiler as an iscsi target, other 2 loaded with ESXi and vm machines stored on Openfiler?

Or is it going to be totally gash at this level?

as stated the utlization isnt huge.
 
Thanks for the info chaps, maybe I will just give it a knock on the head and let those in power call the shots, at least Ive had a look and had a go!!

Many thanks for all the responses.

Maybe i will revisit this another time when the budget stretches higher.
 
I think that may be a good place to start, and I will also put some sort of business case together and see where it goes.

Cheers boys!!! (and girls)
 
I think the main issue is neither of us know enough to really push it forward.

Definately going to be spending more time on ESXi for now and see even if i can virtualise a few less important servers where downtime isnt an issue.

Im going to try and move in this direction in the coming months as alternatives to just buying servers that perform 1 role and wasting resources.

Thanks for all the responses, greatly appreciated ^^.

Currently starting the business case as we speak!
 
brainchylde said:
Where are you based? You are welcome to visit us - South Wales - and see how we've implemented. It may give you a better idea of how things work. As I said, we spent £70k ish on our infrastructure - so we didn't hang about with it, but it'll certainly help you realise what virtualisation can achieve.
Click to expand...

Based in Redditch, Worcs. May take you up on that actually! SW isnt too bad and would definately be worth the visit!! Many thanks for the offer. if you could pm me your details i'll save them :) and take you up on it further down the line.
 
Wasnt particularly sold on any specific product, from impression on the web vmware is the market leader in virtualization?

Downloaded xen to test, have looked into Hyper-V but dont know a lot about it to be honest,

Licensing costs will obviously be a big factor, be interested to hear from people who use various other products aside from esx.

Ash
 
Besty i could kiss you.

Apologies the title is a tad misleading, I am more concerned with same site failover.
Im going to give this a thorough read and more thought tomorrow.

One Q: With vmware am I going to pay £800 per core (physical?) so if i have a single quad core xeon, do i need to shell out £800x4? or just £800.

It seems the company wants High Availability, but doesnt want to pay the premium for it, getting this across to The Board is always going to be an issue, I think your post is just the ticket!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom