[nflug] Virtualization

[Brad Bartram]

I'm not too worried about the equipment working.  It's only used at certain
points in the workflow and that would be eliminated by centralizing.

I deal with a lot of front end data processing - (between .25 - 2TB at a go)
- which is analyzed by the users individually.  Storing that amount of data
is a beast and is especially so when Oracle is involved.  So, by processing
the data on a big server-class machine with lots and lots of RAM and fast
disk access to both the storage side and the database would be a great step
in increasing productivity and efficiency.  Virtualizing the workstation
environment makes sense to me since the front end is pretty light once the
processing is done.

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Justin Elze <formulals1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Connecting from thin clients to the VMs via terminal services or citrix
> assume?
>
> My only fear would be whatever specialized equipment your running working
> over terminal services....I work with a customer who runs a custom app
> written foxpro for dos....regardless we created a number of VMs from a base
> image and all of their employees use older machines and terminal services to
> connect works very well.
>
> Obviously this isn't a good metric but I have a few dual quad core machines
> with 26gb of ram running 20+ virtual machines....obviously a lot of these
> VMs are low load but performance is great....also saves room/power
> consumption in the datacenter.
>
> Having the ability to clone VMs and quickly bring up new machines is great
> for testing/dev enviroments is a huge benifit of virtualiaztion.
>
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Brad Bartram <brad.bartram at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I actually have a couple of different applications I'm toying with right
>> now.
>>
>> For the first one, I'm looking at running a windows based application for
>> multiple users.  I can't get into too much detail for various reasons but
>> it's a traditional client  / server app with an oracle backend.  Under the
>> current configuration, I have quite a few front end machines at the user's
>> desks with each machine being about $10,000.  The problem is that the
>> machines aren't that powerful - they just have some specialized equipment
>> connected to them.
>>
>> Ideally, I want to take those machines off the user's desks - consolidate
>> the hardware in the data center and virtualize the user's environment
>> allowing them to connect via a thin client.  This is very, very simplified -
>> but it's the gist of what I'm thinking.
>>
>> The second application would be the distribution of resources in a web
>> services environment.  This would be a linux environment and would be a LAMP
>> (or in my case LAPP - the first P being postgres) setup.  Just trying to get
>> the most bang for my buck I guess.
>>
>> Brad
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Justin Elze <formulals1 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Are you leaning towards VMWare or Xenserver?
>>>
>>> Currently I run a number of Xenserver deployments running on HP C class
>>> blades and using HP MSA1500 SANs for shared storage this allows for
>>> xenmotion(moving VMs between physical servers with no downtime).  Overall I
>>> have been very happy with Xenserver I have been using it since release 4.0
>>> and it has come a huge way in the past year to the current version 5.0.
>>>
>>> Xenserver makes it very easy to vlan tag interfaces on VMs giving you the
>>> ability to host multiple customers on the same hardware and keep them
>>> unaware of each other.
>>>
>>> One of Xenservers short comes when you virtualize all the servers at a
>>> SMB is tradionally backups were done with a directly attached tape back up
>>> and there is no provision in xenserver for it.
>>>
>>> What kind of enviroment are you looking to virtualize? I could probably
>>> give more appropriate advice/suggestions knowing that.
>>>
>>> Justin Elze
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Brad Bartram <brad.bartram at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm interested in this whole virtualization of servers and services
>>>> trend that's been on going for quite a while.  I've worked with it on
>>>> workstations and in the traditional host - guest configurations to gain
>>>> access to non-native applications - you know, user-level stuff.  I'm
>>>> interested in it on the server side of things though.  I've read the
>>>> marketing propaganda and seen the vendor white papers and all the trade
>>>> news-vertisements, but I'm interested in hearing some real world opinions.
>>>>
>>>> I know some of you have opinions on it.  So what's the good, the bad,
>>>> the shortcomings, and the strengths?  Are there any things I should look out
>>>> for or things I should consider in planning out hardware purchases and such?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>> Brad
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
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