[THIN] Re: OT: VMWare ESX 3.x Internal / DMZ networks on same physical server

I think we all agree the VMWare is a great technology for lower utilized
systems. The point worth emphasizing again is that the threshold is changing
because of the massive performance coming off of newer multi-core
processors, i.e. we are now putting things on VMWare that before we would
only put on raw hardware.

 

Another point to consider is that VMWare is hardware virtualization, OS
virtualization is very mature now and does not suffer from the same resource
penalty inherent in VMWare. We are going to see some very interesting things
in this arena in 2007...

 

Steve Greenberg

Thin Client Computing

34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453

Scottsdale, AZ 85262

(602) 432-8649

www.thinclient.net

steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

  _____  

From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Braebaum, Neil
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 7:59 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare ESX 3.x Internal / DMZ networks on same
physical server

 

I don't think you're in the minority - read my comments carefully ("Same
with VMware - for certain things - app co-existence, underutilised boxes -
it's great.").

 

There's many scenarios it can be great for, but if you want the most out of
your tin, with either demanding apps, or OS requirements, it's not ideal.

 

It's gone full-circle for me - these days the default tends to be VMware,
unless it's a scenario where up-front the requirements are likely to be as
in my previous sentence.

 

All I was really saying is that as a strategy it's getting pushed - and
application vendors are proving to be often reluctant to commit to it - and
it can be something of a battle to derail the bandwagon if up-front you can
see that the requirements may not be ideally suited to a VM environment.

 

None of that is to say that I'm against it, or don't embrace it's advantages
and positives - I do - but just like any other aspect to this techology,
it's not an all-encompassing panacea, or silver bullet - and it would be
nice for the higher ups to be more pragmatic, than simply assume that
everything will fit in this one-size-fits-all box.

 

Neil

 


  _____  


From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Michael Pardee
Sent: 23 February 2007 13:10
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare ESX 3.x Internal / DMZ networks on same
physical server

I must be in the minority, or maybe I just drank too much of the Kool-Aid,
but we couldn't be happier with VMWare.  It's been a great technology for us
and has delivered on our goal of greater server consolidation.  We tend to
use GSX for dev/test and ESX for production.  Some applications are actually
seeing greater availability with the Virtual Infrastructure/HA pieces, and
performance has been great.  We put very little Citrix, SQL, Exchange, and
F&P in VMWare because it's not worth it to take resources away from other
servers/apps that could make better use of the resources.  Things like DCs,
web servers, Web Interface, license servers, etc. have been great in VMWare,
and it has helped with disaster recovery and redundancy.  Our costs aren't
looking too bad either.  We buy fewer, larger servers with lots of memory,
but we then see 40-50 guests on that hardware.  We have an official goal of
virtualizing 20% of our intel servers by the end of 2007, 35% by the end of
2008, and 50% by the end of 2009.  We'll see if we get there, but the first
goal has almost been reached.

It reminds me a lot of Citrix way back in the day, where you couldn't get
vendors to officially support their products if you ran them in a Citrix
environment.  Now that is almost unheard of.  Same with VMWare, but the
Vendors are coming around.

We are currently testing boot from SAN from our IBM Blades to our HP EVA
8000 storage.  So far the testing is going very well, but there is
definitely a cost to doing it as the Blades need daughter cards, the chassis
need redundant Brocade switches, etc., but we are looking to see if this
actually increases our performance since the IBM Blades give you no write
cache for the internal drives = at least with the HS20 model.

As always, your mileage will vary with all of this!




  _____  


From: "Braebaum, Neil" <Neil.Braebaum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:50:50 -0000
To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Conversation: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare ESX 3.x Internal / DMZ networks on same
physical server
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare ESX 3.x Internal / DMZ networks on same
physical server

Agreed on all points - SAN disk being key to most large infrastructures, but
there's no such thing as a free lunch, there. It's not a panacea for all
disk requirements - and as you point out, for certain usages is undesirable,
and probably pointless.

Same with VMware - for certain things - app co-existence, underutilised
boxes - it's great. But if you want performance and the most out of your
tin, it's not where I'd go - if nothing else you've got the OS overhead,
plus the virtualised overhead.

It's a bit of a bandwagon, at the moment, and it just seems that it's a case
of no bandwagon too slow. Whereas in the past, we may have had to fight to
get things like VMware adopted, now we seemingly have to fight to get things
implemented on real tin, where there's a case for it.

Neil





 


  _____  


From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
<mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx%5d>  On Behalf Of Rick  Mack
Sent: 23 February 2007 10:37
To:  thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare ESX 3.x Internal /  DMZ networks on same
physical server

 
 
Hi Steve,
 
 
 
VMs aside, there are still a couple of significant areas where SAN  disks
just don't hack it as a system disk. 
 
 
 
The first is latency which can be 4-5 times worse on a SAN  "disk" (overhead
of fabric switch and other infrastructure) compared to local  disks. I know
that DR etc is a lot easier with SAN disks than local hard  disks, but if
you decide to go SAN boot and still want want real  performance then you'd
better at least consider using the local hard disks for  paging, spooling
and user profiles. 
 
 
 
The second issue is price. Even with 72 GB disks where most of the disk
space is wasted, SAN disk space still costs quite a bit more than RAID
mirrored local drives.
 
 
 
I have a suspicion that there will be a time in the near future when  people
will start realising that that VMWare isn't nearly as cost effective as
everyone argues. Please don't get me wrong, I love the idea of VMWare and
just  wouldn't do without it. It's just that VMWare isn't really about
saving money  once we get away from a development environment. 
 
 
 
And until we can overcome disk and network i/o bottlenecks, having more  CPU
power to play with just isn't all that critical. Of course there are  things
like Vista/Longhorn's flash drive read/write caching that even  things up a
bit but what we really need is the next generation of hard disks  that have
obscenely large on-board caches. That'll let them run at close to  the
interface speeds (eg up to 6 Gb per disk on SASI). 
 
 
 
regards,
 
 
 
Rick
 
 
 
On 2/23/07, Steve Greenberg <steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
 
 




 
 

Nice! This is one  of those mind set changes that we periodically have to go
through. I am  going through one right now with the idea of booting servers
off the SAN, in  the old days this was flaky but I have to update my
thinking and accept that  it works and is trustworthy! 


 
 

Steve  Greenberg


Thin Client  Computing


34522 N. Scottsdale Rd  D8453


Scottsdale, AZ  85262


(602)  432-8649


www.thinclient.net    <http://www.thinclient.net/>
<http://www.thinclient.net/> 


steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx    <mailto:steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<mailto:steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 



 

 

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