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Thread: VMware in a production environment

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    VMware in a production environment

    Hi folks,

    Wondering if anyone here has / does use vmware or similar in a production environment to partition servers? I'm looking at migrating 8 old single CPU PCs (self built 'workstations' running as servers) to 2 proper servers with 2 quad core chips, loads of RAM, etc and would quite like to keep some of the software apart from each other - i.e. logically at least keep it as 8 separate machines. I've only started to scratch the surface with vmware but it seems pretty slick - any tips? I know IO could be a problem - so I'm planning on using separate discs / arrays where possible for each host - and I know I need to leave some CPU and RAM for the host OS to use. Haven't decided on the host OS as yet but the guest OS's will need to be a mix of various versions of Windows (possibly all Windows 2003 Server) and Linux (the existing hosts are all Windows but as we use MySQL a lot I thought I might as well move over to Linux for the DB boxes and save a bit of cash on OS licenses...).

    TIA

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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    Re: VMware in a production environment

    one of my many hats at work is an ESX Admin - I run well over 100 vm's in one Environment alone

    its the daddy.
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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      • CPU:
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      • Memory:
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    Re: VMware in a production environment

    I'll elaborate. At the moment 'we' have:

    8 PCs running P4 2.4Ghz, 512MB and 2 raptors in RAID 1. Various roles for each machine but none of them are actually stressing the machines on a regular basis. FWIW there are:

    3 x MySQL servers. 2 live and one backup box. The 2 live boxes host different databases / instances .
    1 x Web server (IIS on Win 2003, and intra / extranet server so not heavily loaded).
    3 x Application servers running customer code
    1 x 'Admin server'... Runs various GUIs than interact with the server apps on the above machines and acts as a light weight file server for uploading new code to some of the apps.

    All the boxes apart from the web server are running Win 2K (pro) at the moment.

    The push behind upgrading the hardware and using VMware is that the old hardware is just that - we've had several crashes that may be down to the HDDs or PSUs and it's just time to upgrade. I have finally won the argument of getting proper servers in (so hot swap HDDs in RAID 5 or 6, hot swap PSUs, etc) but the budget is too tight to go for 8 machines (even low end) so instead I've proposed VMware on 2 fairly well specced servers.

    I'm thinking of merging the live MySQL instances and placing one on each of the new servers. So they'll be one live and one backup (replicated) virtual server. I want to isolate IIS from everything else too and though the app servers can be installed on the same system they are maintained by separate 3rd parties so it's just cleaner to keep them separate.

    I'm wondering where the bottlenecks will be right now. Obviously I'll reserve separate disc(s) / a separate array for the DB servers and I'll probably play around with the RAM and CPUs allocated to each virtual server instead of dividing the cores and RAM equally. Is it reasonable to expect to allocate most of each physical server's resources to the virtual servers? i.e. if I have an 8 core box with 16GB RAM is it reasonable to allocate say 7 cores and ~14GB of the RAM to the guest machines or will I need to reserve more resources for the host itself? I appreciate any response will be finger in the air but I'd quite like to hear an opinion from someone that has real life experience. FWIW I'll likely use VMware server (i.e. the free version) than plump for ESX simply on the grounds of cost.

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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    Re: VMware in a production environment

    I'd still go for ESX - that way you can leverage the DRS and Vmotion capabilities of moving guests between each host. You'd also be better of using an iSCSI san rather than local discs - again the shared storage would get over the IO issues. ESX has a much lower overhead that vmware server as it doesn't sit on top of an OS , its just the hypervisor.

    Quad core boxes are definatly the way to go on it though. I usually allocate the service console about half a gig of memory , but that only because i run a few extra processes inside it. I dont have to worry as much about the CPU reservation for the hypervisor as it always takes precedence. I can't see much of a problem with the spec you've gone for , but I'd certainly look at different storage ( with the costs of decent disc controllers etc, a SAN is a much nicer way of doing it )
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    • malfunction's system
      • Motherboard:
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      • CPU:
      • Xeon X5670 (6 core LGA 1366) @ 4.4GHz
      • Memory:
      • 48GB DDR3 1600 (6 * 8GB)
      • Storage:
      • 1TB 840 Evo + 1TB 850 Evo
      • Graphics card(s):
      • 290X
      • PSU:
      • Antec True Power New 750W
      • Case:
      • Cooltek W2
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dell U2715H

    Re: VMware in a production environment

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    I'd still go for ESX - that way you can leverage the DRS and Vmotion capabilities of moving guests between each host. You'd also be better of using an iSCSI san rather than local discs - again the shared storage would get over the IO issues. ESX has a much lower overhead that vmware server as it doesn't sit on top of an OS , its just the hypervisor.

    Quad core boxes are definatly the way to go on it though. I usually allocate the service console about half a gig of memory , but that only because i run a few extra processes inside it. I dont have to worry as much about the CPU reservation for the hypervisor as it always takes precedence. I can't see much of a problem with the spec you've gone for , but I'd certainly look at different storage ( with the costs of decent disc controllers etc, a SAN is a much nicer way of doing it )
    Thanks - I'll look at getting a separate SAN box but unfortunately budget may not allow for it... I am worried about IO performance on the DB side. FWIW the 2 server boxes I'm looking at (Dell or HP at the moment) support up to 8 hot swap HDDs in RAID 5... No idea how good performance is on the included controller (PERC 6i for the Dells). It's easiest to go for 1 RAID 5 array but I may actually end up splitting it into 2 or 3 RAID 1 arrays so I can separate out the DB, host and the other virtual hosts. After shopping around a bit I'm amazed at how hard it is to get decent detailed specs out of each manufacturer - lots of manual reading required - in terms of knowing what you're getting I'd find it easier to buy a barebones Tyan and build it up myself!

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    Re: VMware in a production environment

    last time I used a del server , it didn't have a split backplane , so the configuraiton options wern't up to much.

    low cost iSCSI sans are around - I doubt you'll need that much space - couple of tb or so.

    heres a DIY guide

    For the small IT shop: Building a SAN on the cheap

    or for just 2 hosts you could probably buy an extra disc controller for each one , and hook them both up to the same disk shelf for DAS

    having a seperate disck controller for just the VM's is fine. I've run a host that way , and while its not as fast as a SAN its not too bad ( I ran about 25 guests on a proliant dl585g1 with 64Gb of memory )
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    • malfunction's system
      • Motherboard:
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      • CPU:
      • Xeon X5670 (6 core LGA 1366) @ 4.4GHz
      • Memory:
      • 48GB DDR3 1600 (6 * 8GB)
      • Storage:
      • 1TB 840 Evo + 1TB 850 Evo
      • Graphics card(s):
      • 290X
      • PSU:
      • Antec True Power New 750W
      • Case:
      • Cooltek W2
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dell U2715H

    Re: VMware in a production environment

    Yet more reading to do (!) - cheers Moby.

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