Looking into virtualization!

Street

Street

Street

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
Posts
8,695
Location
Liverpool
A few months ago a company we look after was looking at upgrading their aging kit but they didn't act on the quote we gave them. Now again as they require a piece of software that doesn't run on Server2k they have come back to us to look at changing their servers.

They are currently running two HP servers, one for terminal services and one does DC/database. I've never dealt with VMWare much before apart from using VMWare Workstation on my laptop. Would it be worth getting one server and splitting it into 3 VMs running DC/Database/TS? They have about 20 people accessing via TS and a further 10 accessing normally.

We normally supply Dell servers to clients but was wondering what the best harddrive configuration would be for the above. Maybe two small drives in RAID1 for ESXi and a few others in RAID10? 15k drives would be the best wouldn't they? I would go for two quad core CPUs and a fair bit of RAM. What are the advantages of moving to DAS instead of local disks? And also how do backups work with ESXi? The budget is around 8k max including OS licenses.

Any advice is welcome!
Thanks,
Andy
 
Street said:
What are the advantages of moving to DAS instead of local disks?
Click to expand...

Some DAS solution will let you connect more then one server. If you have shared storage (and are prepared to extra for licence the features) you can access your VMs from more then one server. You can move servers on the fly (vmotion) without shutting them down then can also automaticaly boot on the other server in event of failure (High Availability). You can even set it up to automaticaly move the servers around optimise performance.

However in the single server set the only advantage you really gain is possibley more capasity.

Backups can work several ways, it's common to just backup the way you do in a normal multiserver environment. You have the backup software (for instance Back Exec) install on one server and then either backup the other servers via a share or using the remote agent software that's included with the backup software (or in many cases cost extra.)
 
Sorry I meant backups of the whole VM! :)

With their budget I don't think DAS is really an option so I'm best off sticking to one server.. Was just thinking of backups incase the server went down. They'd be pretty screwed with just the one box taking all 3 servers down!
 
Be careful offering ESXi as a solution in this instance. Whilst it is good and seems a solid product, if the hardware dies, you've lost EVERYTHING. Would go for ESX if you possibly can with a SAN. Perhaps look at something like OpenFiler as an alternative. I've never used it with ESX/i though.

Backups of the whole VM can be done using VRanger. These won't replace traditional backups though - especially databases etc (if they exist).
 
Haha.. I was tempted to give them that reason! :p I'm just trying to push some new technologies onto clients that are stuck in the stone age at the moment!
 
Last edited:
Some random thoughts from me..

ESX sounds like a nice product, but because I am a cheapskate I would mention that there are other solutions such as Xen and KVM.

For backup purposes, I would take a snapshot of the VM (preferably when it is turned off), and backup the actual data in traditional ways.

I prefer the idea of storing the data on a SAN/NAS, which will mean you can move the VMs to different hardware quickly and easily in the event of failure. A DAS could in theory also facilitate this, depending on the setup. This is of course, not a backup solution.

I believe it's normal to expect about 80% performance from a VM, assuming resources are not contested, but I have no figures to back that up. I would also advise you to buy AMD-V and VT-x enabled hardware, but I would not guarantee you can migrate running severs from AMD-V to VT-x hardware.
 
Shaz]sigh[;14844277 said:
Not sure on the cost but HP's Lefthand will virtualise ESX local storage.
Click to expand...

Terrifying describes it fairly well. I mean it's a lovely product and really clever with it but dear god it costs a lot for any size of solution...
 
Right well I've come up with an idea..

Run one cheap server as a DC..
Low end Opteron, 2GB RAM, 2x 250GB SATA RAID1

Then virtualize the database and ts servers onto one beast..
2x 2.26GHz Xeon, 16GB RAM, 6x 146GB SAS RAID10 with 1 hotspare and redunant PSU.

How does that sound?
 
Street said:
Right well I've come up with an idea..

Run one cheap server as a DC..
Low end Opteron, 2GB RAM, 2x 250GB SATA RAID1

Then virtualize the database and ts servers onto one beast..
2x 2.26GHz Xeon, 16GB RAM, 6x 146GB SAS RAID10 with 1 hotspare and redunant PSU.

How does that sound?
Click to expand...

Well it sounds plausible but I'm not sure what it achieves in some ways, if your virtualisation server dies you'll be left with AD which might or might not be much use on it's own.

The way I see it, either you virtualise it all onto one server and accept the risks (and run dual power supplies and sensible RAID - that is to say probably RAID6/ADG/Equivalent).

Or if you want two servers then put AD and the database on one server and a terminal server on the other, no point in virtualisation for the sake of it. Sure if it'll help with an upgrade in six months then go for it but as you describe it, it sounds like they'll have this setup for ages to come in which case you'll loose a small amount of performance and add complexity for no gain.
 
Hmm.. Fair point! :)

Trouble is, after licensing costs are taken out of the budget it only leaves me with just over 4k. Three separate servers would be the simplest and as you said they probably won't change them for another 10 years!
 
Careful virtualising databases.A lot of people have had success but you can get in a mess if you do anything advanced. Be particularly careful if you are snapshotting this sort of machine.

As far as virtualising goes - please try and separate the storage. You'll be glad you did it in the end. Even if it's only something like OpenFiler.
 
You'll need a minimum if two ESX servers with a shared VMFS storage otherwise you'll risk all your VM's going when the only server goes down.
 
bigredshark said:
no point in virtualisation for the sake of it.
Click to expand...

Amen, far too many people going out there and sticking in all the vm infrastructure then sitting back and saying 'right, now what can we do with this" :)

Not in the OP case, but it is a problem in many places :)

We've got about 20 (I think!) of our servers and and a few desktops virtualised.

The kit for it cost a fortune, massive overkill imho lol but my place have a habit of doing that.
 
Street said:
Right well I've come up with an idea..

Then virtualize the database and ts servers onto one beast..
2x 2.26GHz Xeon, 16GB RAM, 6x 146GB SAS RAID10 with 1 hotspare and redunant PSU.

How does that sound?
Click to expand...

Cut that box in half. 2 boxes, 2.26ghz xeons and 8gb of ram over 2 machines for redundancy. I've got a ESXi server running in my env which is doing pretty much the same spec and runnign a DC\FileMaker and some financial app which has a Sybase I believe DB on it.

Also, it should be noted that ESX full blown is quite expensive, and ESXi's backup capabilities are a bit cack, full blown ESX with BE 12.5 w/ VMWare plugin = awesomes, flatfile + file backups meaning you can get back singular files on the VM as well as the full thing.
 
Last edited:
Given up on the visualization idea now.. Going to stick with three boxes.

1 DC.. Dell T105, 2.1GHz Opteron, 2GB RAM, 2x250GB SATA RAID1
1 DB/FS.. Dell T410, 2.0GHz Xeon, 4GB RAM, 2x146GB SAS RAID1, 2x300GB SAS RAID1, Redundant PSU
1 TS.. Dell T410, 2.4GHz Xeon, 8GB RAM, 2x146GB SAS RAID1, Redundant PSU

Works out at just about my budget with licensing costs.. TS licenses are the killer! :(
 
Last edited:
For just that many servers I probably wouldn't virtualise either, unless I needed better redudancy/DR as if you've got the kit (and the cash) virtualising can make this a lot easier.

We don't have what I'd call a lot virtualised, counted up about 40 servers (more than I remembered!) but it's still sat on a relatively high value of kit though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom