[nflug] Virtualization

[Cyber Source]

vmware server management console is web based (even the box where vmware 
server actually runs defaults to web based). This was implemented in the 
latest version/

David J. Andruczyk wrote:
> We use Xen Enterprise (commercial Xensource Xen) for our DEV/QA 
> environments.  We have 4 high end Dell's (dual Quad core 5365 Xeons 
> iwht 600GB of disk and 32 GB of ram) running 18-23 VM's 1-2G Ram 
> each.   By far we have found it to be a fantastic investment.  I 
> personally setup the systems and handle day to day mgmt.   The only 
> downer I personaly have with Xensource is the mgmt console is windows 
> only (which i run on a virtualbox WinXP vm on my personal ubuntu 
> workstation).  the main reason we went with commercial xen was that it 
> is proven and we needed to be able to ru na few Windows VM and they 
> needed to be maximal performers.
>
> Ours VM's are FC4-6 (not supported by Xen but I found some creative 
> solutions), Centos5.x, and Windows 2000 and XP.  all perform 
> remarkably well.  We don't have a shared storage backend (SAN) for 
> these, so we don't utilize live migration or Xen clusters, so I can't 
> comment on hos that part works or not.
>
> Things to remember, is that your Hosts will need to be sized to handle 
> your guest IO loads,  and  in the case of Xen,  if one VM monopolizes 
> IO bandwidth, the other VM's can suffer,  so size the disks and 
> network BW appropriately (GB minimum).  The more RAM the better, and 
> more CPU cores helps a lot (the dual quads in our case were a 
> excellent choice).
>
> It also helps to not stick all of your high demand VM's all on the 
> same xenhost (i.e.  don't stick 8 busy oracle servers on it).  Virtual 
> machiens have overhead,  and the most where I've seen the limits for 
> xen is I/O (we have version 4.x,  version 5.x is supposedly much 
> better in this regard).   Also cpu bound performance is as good as 
> native as far as I can see it (within a couple percent).  I'm not sure 
> about VMware's esx in this regard,  but the design of vmware (dynamic 
> recompilation), vs' xen's paravirtualization tells me that xen wil be 
> far ahead for cpu bound tasks, and vmware may take the lead slightly 
> on IObound tasks (depends on the io, whether, disk based or network).
>
>  
> -- David J. Andruczyk
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Brad Bartram <brad.bartram at gmail.com>
> *To:* nflug at nflug.org
> *Sent:* Monday, December 15, 2008 1:41:25 PM
> *Subject:* [nflug] Virtualization
>
> 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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